Emily holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. in Neuroscience from Smith College. Prior to moving to UCSB in 2016, she was an Instructor at Harvard Medical School and the Department of Medicine/Division of Women’s Health at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. She has been named a Hellman Fellow, a Brain and Behavior Young Investigator, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar, a National Institutes of Health “BIRCWH” Women’s Health Fellow, and a National Academy of Sciences Frontiers of Science Fellow for “distinguished young scientists under 45.” In 2022, she was named top 10 scientists to watch by Science News. In addition to her research, the Jacobs Lab advocates for diversity in science at the national and international level. Her lab regularly partners with K-12 groups throughout the central coast to advance girls’ representation in STEM, work that was featured in the book “STEMinists: The Lifework of 12 Women Scientists and Engineers”.  

Research

The brain is an endocrine organ and sex hormones’ influence on the central nervous system can be measured across spatio-temporal scales. In many mammalian species, sex hormones regulate cell survival, plasticity, and the global morphology of brain regions that support learning and memory. The Jacobs Lab explores the structural and functional changes in the human brain that occur in response to changing hormonal conditions. We pair brain imaging tools with endocrine assessments to study how endogenous and exogenous hormonal factors (e.g. neuroendocrine aging during menopause, pharmacological manipulations of sex hormones) influence aspects of brain structure, function, and cognition in women and men.