Laura Cox, Ph.D., is an instructor at the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She began her career in anaerobic bacteriology and was trained and board certified as a medical technologist and worked for two years as a clinical microbiologist. She obtained her PhD at NYU in Dr. Martin Blaser’s lab, where her work demonstrated that early-life antibiotic treatment results in lasting changes in metabolism. Laura is now investigating the influence of intestinal microbiota on immunity and neurodegenerative diseases, including multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease. She was recently granted the Harvard the Alzheimer’s Women’s Movement Award, and the Brigham Women’s Brain Institute Fellowship for her studies of gender-dependent interactions between microbiota and diet in a model of Alzheimer’s disease.