Emily Jacobs, PhD, is a Professor of Neuroscience at University of California–Santa Barbara (UCSB) and Director of the Ann S. Bowers Women's Brain Health Initiative, a research consortium headquartered at UCSB and spanning seven University of California campuses, Stanford, Cornell and global collaborators. Her body of research is redefining our understanding of the brain’s capacity to undergo dynamic neuroanatomical changes into adulthood. In 2024 her team published the first detailed map of the human brain across pregnancy, and she leads several multi-center studies on neurological changes tied to menopause. Prior to UCSB, she held a faculty appointment at Harvard Medical School and the Department of Medicine/Division of Women's Health at Brigham & Women's Hospital. She serves on the Steering Committee of the Coalition for Women’s Brain Health, the Milken Institute’s Women’s Health Network, and the Foundation for Women’s Health to drive the national and international agenda on women’s health research. In recognition of her work, Dr. Jacobs was named a National Institutes of Health Women's Health Fellow, a National Academy of Sciences Frontiers of Science Fellow, and one of Science News' “Top 10 Scientists” to watch. Outside of lab, Dr. Jacobs’s team partners with K-12 groups to advance girls' representation in STEM. You can find her work in the New York Times, National Geographic, and Scientific American, and on NPR, BBC, TED, Netflix, Radiolab, and MasterClass. She is a graduate of Smith College and the University of California–Berkeley.
