Mapping the brain with Anand Rao
The Stanford neuroscientist talks Parkinson’s, science communication, and finding strength in family
The son of an organic chemist and a school teacher, Anand Rao grew up in a household of science.
“My father would — anytime we would go for a walk, or we would even be in airplane — he would describe the physics of how the airplane flies, or why grass is green, and how is it we have energy,” Rao recalled.
Now a postdoctoral research scholar in neuroscience at Stanford, Rao attributes much of his passion for science to the way his parents fed his eager curiosity as a child — and acknowledges how rare that guidance is.
“I recognize that privilege,” Rao said. “The ability to have someone to kind of talk about [science] in a very informal way early on is what allowed me to gravitate towards the STEM fields.”
What is a day in the life of Anand Rao?
As the chair of Stanford’s postdoc association, Rao has a lot to juggle: research, leadership, and family. But he appreciates the flexibility of being an academic researcher.
“My day is what I make of it,” Rao said. “Hitting the wet lab hard, hitting the bench hard and grinding out experiments so I get as much data as possible, it could be the next particular week I’m analyzing that data and putting it into manuscript form for publication.”
His wife — who lives nearly a thousand miles away, in Denver — encourages him to make the most of his time while they’re apart.
“When we made the decision for me to come to Stanford, one of the conditions was, ‘you better use every hour of the day to make sure you’re getting the value out of being there,’” Rao added.
Rao began studying the brain as an undergraduate, in a behavioral lab studying spatial memory — for example, “place cells” in the hippocampus that help us generate mental maps of our surroundings.
From here, Rao went on to study Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder marked by tremors and loss of balance, at Penn State. His experiences there helped him realize that he wanted to better understand the mechanisms underlying Parkinson’s and other neurological disorders. Which meant looking a little bit deeper into the architecture of the brain, into the cells — the neurons — themselves.
Cells, like human bodies, need both structure and a way to transport chemicals and nutrients. They do this through their version of a skeleton, called the cytoskeleton. A key component of this skeleton is the microtubule.
“Any cell in the human body, whether it’s a skin cell or a brain cell, has microtubules,” Rao explained. “Not only is that the skeleton of the cells, but it’s also the railroad — or the highways if you want to call them that — on which all of the proteins and organelles like mitochondria are transported on in order to get where they need to be.”
After studying microtubules for five years, Rao decided to apply what he’d learned to tackling new problems. This brought him to Stanford.
“Now that I have this molecular, mechanistic knowledge about microtubules, how can I use that to create therapies for stroke, or make better anesthetics for anesthesia and medical procedures?” Rao asks himself.
Communication and Community
Rao said the most rewarding aspect of his work is talking about it with people who may not know anything about neuroscience, or even much of any science at all. His passion for #scicomm — science communication to the public — also reflects his upbringing.
“My dad was my science communicator throughout my life, and I want to be that for people that don’t have that privilege,” he said.
Communication is just as important within science, according to Rao. An advantage of doing research at Stanford is its tremendous community of researchers and their willingness to collaborate, both within and across disciplines. Rao said this community helps take some of the pressure off of individual researchers.
And as someone whose work could affect hundreds of thousands of people’s ability to recover from a common and debilitating injury — stroke — it would be easy for Rao to feel a lot of weight on his shoulders personally.
“You hear all of these people…say, ‘Oh, I have a grandmother that recently had a stroke, and we were lucky because we got her there quickly, but she still isn’t able to have full motor function in her right arm’ or ‘My mom had a stroke, and that’s how we lost her,’” Rao explained. “You hear these stories and you realize — this is why I do what I do, and this is why it’s so important that I stay committed and don’t get distracted and don’t get discouraged.”
Who is Anand Rao’s personal powerhouse?
“I would have to say my grandfather,” Rao said. “He is one of three children that survived out of thirteen in a small village in India.”
Rao’s grandfather went from India to Harvard University to study theology — but due to financial limitations, he had to leave his two children, including Rao’s father, behind. It took his grandfather and grandmother two years to save up enough money to reunite their family and bring their children to the U.S.
“He did that to create a better life for not only my father, but indirectly, me,” Rao said. “Without that effort, without that grit and tenacity, I wouldn’t be where I am today and I wouldn’t be able to help people the way that I am. So if there was ever a powerhouse, it’s my grandfather for sure.”
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