The Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute (HWNI) is pleased to announce that HWNI member Markita Landry is the winner of the 2026 Rennie Fund for the Study of Epilepsy. The Rennie Fund was created as the result of a bequest from the Mary Elizabeth Rennie Trust and is administered by HWNI. The fund provides awards to support basic research into neuronal activity and synaptic function including but not limited to epilepsy.
Landry will receive funding for her project described below, which investigates how seizures begin by directly visualizing dopamine during seizure-like activity, using a new class of optical nanosensor developed in the Landry lab.
Real-time imaging of dopamine dynamics during seizure-like activity in neural circuits
Markita Landry
Associate Professor
Department of Neuroscience
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
University of California, Berkeley
Epilepsy affects over 50 million people worldwide, yet we still do not fully understand what happens in the brain at the moment a seizure begins. Most current tools measure electrical activity, but miss the underlying chemical signals that ultimately control how brain cells communicate, largely because existing technologies lack the ability to monitor these signals in real time with sufficient resolution. This project will use a new class of optical nanosensors to directly visualize dopamine, a key brain chemical, in real time during seizure-like activity. Unlike conventional approaches, these nanosensors are non-photobleaching and enable synaptic-scale measurements, enabling continuous measurement of chemical signaling with high spatial and temporal resolution during prolonged and rapidly evolving brain activity. By revealing how dopamine and related inhibitory signals change before and during seizures, this work aims to uncover previously hidden mechanisms that control when seizures start and how they spread.
The impact of this project is to reveal a previously unmeasured layer of brain activity in the form of real-time chemical signaling that may play a critical role in when and how seizures begin. More broadly, this work addresses a major technological gap in neuroscience by enabling direct observation of chemical communication in the brain, an essential but currently inaccessible dimension of neural function. These insights could open the door to entirely new therapeutic strategies that target brain chemistry, rather than just electrical activity, ultimately improving treatment options for patients with epilepsy.
About the Rennie Fund for the Study of Epilepsy
The Rennie Fund was created in 1962 as the result of a bequest from the Mary Elizabeth Rennie Trust. Ms. Rennie’s brother, William Rennie, Jr., had been a member of the Berkeley class of 1919. The bequest was initially made to the UC Regents to be used at their discretion for the study of epilepsy, but in 1981, the fund was allocated to the UC Berkeley campus.
From 1981 to 2017, the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate funded 2-3 grants per year to faculty doing research on epilepsy as part of the Senate’s faculty grants program. Many of those faculty are now affiliated with HWNI. In 2017, the Senate transferred the Rennie Fund to HWNI, which currently administers the fund.
Grants are awarded annually to single research groups or teams to support basic research into neuronal activity and synaptic function including but not limited to epilepsy. Funds can be used to support research, development, conferences, and postdoc/graduate student support. Visit the Rennie Fund page to learn more.
