Kareena joined the Allen Institute in 2024 as a research associate for the axonal connectomics group in the Neural Coding department led by Dr. Clay Reid. In this role, she uses novel expansion microscopy and histological methods to map long-range axons at the mesoscale in the mouse and human brain. Her work primarily focuses on gathering the intricate data on neural connections, which will later be used for advanced computational analysis.

Kareena earned her undergraduate degree in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During her time at MIT, she extensively studied topics in neurobiology, computational neuroscience, and experimental research methodologies. At MIT’s Research Laboratory for Electronics, she performed neurobiology research on the mouse brain-gut axis which laid her foundation to begin her work at the Allen Institute.

Currently, Kareena is pursuing a Master’s degree in Data Science at the University of Texas at Austin. She hopes to enhance her skills in computational techniques and data analysis, which she will apply to her research on axonal tracing and segmentation and contribute to the field of connectomics.