JoAnn Buchanan , Ph.D.

2021 was a professionally-thrilling year for scientist JoAnn Buchanan. 

In spring, her research revealing a previously unknown role that glial cells play in brain development appeared on the scientific website Biorxiv.org.

“It generated a huge tweetstorm and validated the fact that I had made a big discovery,” she said.

In summer, she was on a team of scientists and engineers that released the most detailed diagram of mammalian brain circuitry to date. (The electron microscope images JoAnn helped create for the MICrONS Explorer capture 200,000 cells and millions of synapses in an area of mouse brain the size of a grain of sand.) 

And in the fall, she received her doctorate in Biology — the culmination of a scientific education that began at Russell Sage College. 

“I knew it would be hard,” she said of her decision to switch her major from Sociology to Biology her sophomore year, “but I was determined to do whatever it took.”

“I would have floundered in a large school,” JoAnn continued. 

But instead, at Sage, she found a supportive environment; scientific role models like professors Geneva Sayre and Nancy Slack; and lots of hands-on experience. 

“I got to work in the lab — making agar dishes and washing petri dishes — and I liked it,” she said. 

A scientific writing course was also great preparation for the two dozen scientific papers JoAnn has authored so far. 

JoAnn learned electron microscopy in her first job after graduating from Sage, and honed those skills in subsequent positions at Harvard, Yale, Boston University and Stanford Medical Schools, and at the famed Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.

Her experience at Woods Hole turned out to be especially significant.

It’s where she met her husband; where she began to apply her electron microscopy skills to neuroscience; and where she learned to use a new microtome — a kind of cutting tool — to prepare thousands of extremely thin tissue samples with high contrast.

“I ended up with expertise needed for the new field of EM connectomics,” said JoAnn of her ongoing work to make the “tiny wires of the brain” visible and advance fields from life sciences to artificial intelligence. 

Today, JoAnn is a scientist at the Allen Institute in Seattle. 

When she joined the Allen Institute, she had 25 publications and teaching experience at top-tier institutions, but no doctorate. 

Former Sage professor, now friend, Nancy Slack “urged me to get a Ph.D., even years after graduation,” said JoAnn. “She made a big impact on me.”

JoAnn began Northeastern University’s Ph.D. program in 2017. 

In the end, her timing was perfect: She used the MICrONS datasets she was working on at the Allen Institute for her dissertation, which led to her discovery about glial cells.

“I did feel energized and excited to have a project all my own,” she said. “Plus, many people found my story inspirational, which made me happy.”

“The tortoise wins the race — my approach was slow and steady and never giving up.”