Gloria Choi facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Gloria Choi
Born	South Korea
Nationality	American
Alma mater	B.A. University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. Caltech, Postdoctoral work Columbia University
Known for	Maternal immune activation drives Th17 cells to release IL-17a causing cortical defects in offspring and ASD-like behavioral phenotypes
Awards	2025 Ho-Am Prize in Medicine, 2019 Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative Awardee, 2018 Peter Gruss Young Investigator Award Winner, 2017 Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative Pilot Awardee, 2014 Cell’s 40th Anniversary 40 under 40, 2014 Sloan Research Fellowship
Scientific career
Fields	Neuroscience, neuroimmunology
Institutions	Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Korean name
Hangul	최보윤
Revised Romanization	Choe Boyun
McCune–Reischauer	Ch'oe Poyun

Gloria Bohyun Choi is an American neuroscientist and neuroimmunologist. She works at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Choi is famous for her research on how the immune system can affect brain development. Her work helps us understand conditions like autism spectrum disorder. Her lab also studies how our senses, especially smell, influence our feelings and actions.

Early Life and Education

Gloria Choi was born in South Korea. She moved to America when she was a teenager. Her family settled in Southern California. There, she found that math and science were easier to understand while she was learning English. She really liked biology in high school. This led her to study biological sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

Starting Research Early

Dr. Choi was interested in how her studies could be used in real life. So, she joined a lab at the University of California, Berkeley. She worked with Richard Harland to study how cells work. Even as an undergraduate, she helped write a science paper in 2001. This paper showed how a part of a developing frog controls the size of its body segments.

After getting her bachelor's degree, she decided to continue her studies. She earned a PhD in Biological Sciences from the Caltech.

Graduate Studies

At Caltech, Dr. Choi joined the lab of David J. Anderson. He was studying how the brain controls natural behaviors. Dr. Choi's early work focused on how different brain cells develop. She helped discover how certain proteins guide the development of important brain cells.

She then started exploring how the brain controls natural actions. Animals can sense other animals and react with either defensive or friendly behaviors. Dr. Choi wanted to know how the brain is wired for these reactions. She found two brain pathways that start from the same area. These pathways receive the same smell information. But one pathway leads to friendly behaviors, and the other leads to defensive ones. This showed how the brain can create different actions from the same sensory input.

Postdoctoral Research

After finishing her PhD in 2005, Dr. Choi moved to New York. She joined the lab of Nobel Prize winner, Richard Axel, for her postdoctoral training. She continued to study how the sense of smell works. She explored how the brain's smell center, called the piriform cortex, processes smells and affects behavior.

In 2011, she made an important discovery. She found that the piriform cortex doesn't organize smells by location. She used a special light technique to activate random groups of brain cells. She paired this activation with a reward or a mild shock. Later, just activating these brain cells made the animals react as if they smelled something. This showed that the piriform cortex can create strong behaviors even without a real smell.

Career and Research at MIT

In 2013, Dr. Choi joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She became a professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. At MIT, her lab studies how our senses affect our feelings and actions. She uses the olfactory system (our sense of smell) to understand how sensory information leads to behaviors. She also explores how the brain changes and adapts.

Dr. Choi has also started to research how the immune system in the brain affects social behaviors. She studies how a mother's immune system during pregnancy can impact her offspring's behavior.

Oxytocin and Social Behavior

Oxytocin is a hormone known to be important for social behaviors. Since smell is also key for social interactions, Dr. Choi's team studied how oxytocin affects social behaviors linked to smells. They found that oxytocin is needed for animals to learn connections between smells and social cues. For example, learning to recognize a friend by their smell. Activating oxytocin-related brain cells helped with social learning. This showed that oxytocin in the piriform cortex is important for learning social information from smells.

Immune System and Brain Development

Dr. Choi became very interested in why mothers who get viral infections during pregnancy sometimes have children with a higher chance of developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD). She used a special model called Maternal Immune Activation (MIA) to study this.

Her team found that a specific type of immune cell, called T cells, and a signaling molecule, IL-17a, are important for MIA to cause ASD-like behaviors in offspring. When these T cells release IL-17a in the mother, it can lead to unusual brain development in the offspring. This suggests that targeting these T cells in the mother might help prevent these issues.

Later, Dr. Choi's team found that bacteria in the mother's gut can activate these T cells. This leads to the release of IL-17a and brain changes. They also identified the main brain area affected in MIA models: a part of the somatosensory cortex. They found that calming this brain region reduced the ASD-like behaviors in the offspring.

Recently, Dr. Choi and her team discovered that IL-17 can help improve social behaviors in models of ASD. Giving IL-17a directly to the affected brain area helped reduce behavioral problems. This research shows how the immune system can affect brain development. It also suggests that IL-17a might be a possible treatment to help with social behavior challenges.

Awards

• 2025 Ho-Am Prize in Medicine
• 2021 Carol and Gene Ludwig Award for Early Career Research
• 2021 Mark Hyman, Jr. Career Development Professorship
• 2019 Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation (NLMFF) Career Development Award
• 2019 Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative Awardee
• 2018 Peter Gruss Young Investigator Award Winner
• 2017 Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative Pilot Awardee
• 2014 Cell's 40th Anniversary 40 under 40
• 2014 Sloan Research Fellowship

Personal Life

Dr. Choi is married to Jun Huh, who is also a professor. He teaches immunology at Harvard Medical School.