Lena Smirnova

Lena Smirnova, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with primary appointments in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering and the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT). She specializes in human stem cell-derived models for developmental neurotoxicity testing and gene-environment interactions in autism.

• Education: PhD in Neuroscience (Free University of Berlin, 2007)

Her research focuses on microRNA regulation, in vitro toxicology, and iPSC-derived brain organoids to replace animal models. Recent work explores organoid intelligence (OI) as a biocomputing frontier. She has published 76 research outputs since 2005, with 13 articles in 2024 and 13 in 2025 alone.

Dr. Smirnova's publications highlight microphysiological systems for neurotoxicity screening, brain spheroid models for nanoparticle biocompatibility, and 3D neuronal cultures for resilience analysis. She advocates for animal-free testing through initiatives like the LUSH Prize and Green and Open Neuroscience Hero award.

• Scientific Awards:
  • 2017-19 Excellence in Teaching (EHE courses)
  • 2017 Green and Open Neuroscience Hero
  • 2015 LUSH Prize Young Investigator
  • 2011 World Congress on Alternatives Poster Award
  • 2007 Berlin Scientist Society Doctoral Thesis Award
  • 2002 DFG Graduate Scholarship

She advises graduate students in multi-institutional collaborations and contributes to regulatory frameworks through the Good In Vitro Reporting Standards project. Her lab develops dynamic microphysiological platforms for studying environmental stress responses and neurodevelopmental disorders.