Dr. Sonia Mayoral is the Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Assistant Professor of Brain Science at Brown University and a leading cellular neuroscientist specializing in oligodendrocytes and myelin biology. She completed her bachelor’s degree in biological sciences at San Jose State University, her Ph.D. in neuroscience at Stanford University, and her postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco, before joining the Brown faculty in 2021.

Mayoral’s scientific career began through an undergraduate research program, where she discovered her passion for understanding how the brain develops. This early exposure led her to glial cell research—first in the context of axon guidance and later in disease-focused studies at the Mayo Clinic and UCSF. Today, her work explores how oligodendrocytes support neurons, regulate myelin formation, and influence processes such as learning, memory, and neurodegeneration. Her research aims to uncover how glial dysfunction contributes to neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis and how insights into myelin biology may inspire new therapeutic strategies.

Since 2018 Prof. Dr. Kipp is Director of the Institute of Anatomy. He and his research group are interested to understand the physiology and pathology of the axon-oligodendrocyte-myelin unit. Particularly, they are interested to understand to what extend stressed oligodendrocytes regulate peripheral immune cell recruitment, and by which neuroanatomical pathways peripheral immune cells gain access into the CNS parenchyma. To address their scientific challenges they use state of the art techniques such as design-based stereology, a set of behavioral analyses such as high speed ventral plane videography, or positron emission tomography/computed tomography. Whenever possible, they compare their pre-clinical results with post-mortem samples, obtained from MS patient donors.