Experience

Doctoral & Postdoctoral Researcher

2019 – Present
Harnett Lab · Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Led a research program on synaptic plasticity in the neocortex, identifying plateau potentials as a candidate instructive signal for rapid cortical learning
  • Designed and executed 300+ in vivo mouse electrophysiology experiments combining whole-cell patch clamp, local field potential, sensory stimulation, and behavioral monitoring to study how cortical neurons integrate input over time
  • Built Python/MATLAB pipelines (preprocessing, QC, event detection, feature extraction, statistics) large datasets, cutting manual analysis time by ~70% and standardizing outputs across the lab
  • Developed LN-Remote, an open-source remote controller for automated probe insertion, saving ~40 minutes per experiment and improving consistency during data collection
  • Integrated histology, immunohistochemistry, and confocal imaging with recording data to verify cell identity and recording location, linking functional results to anatomy
  • Mentored and trained 9 lab members in electrophysiology, stereotaxic surgery, microscopy, and quantitative analysis; managed 2 research technicians
  • Created a lab-wide SOP repository that shortened onboarding and improved experimental consistency across the lab

Selected Work

Yaeger, C. E.*, Mojica Soto-Albors, R.*, et al. (2025)
Plateau potentials are instructive signals for behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity in the neocortex.
bioRxiv; under review at Nature
* Equal Contribution
Contributions: Conceptualization, Experimentation, Data Analysis, Manuscript Writing
Fischer, L. F., Mojica Soto-Albors, R., et al. (2022)
Dendritic mechanisms for in vivo neural computations and behavior.
Journal of Neuroscience · DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1132-22.2022
Conference review paper
Contributions: Manuscript Writing and Editing
Fischer, L. F., Mojica Soto-Albors, R., Buck, F. & Harnett, M. T. (2020)
Representation of visual landmarks in retrosplenial cortex.
Contributions: Experimentation, Data Analysis