Dr. Jayalakshmi (Jaya) Viswanathan is a Health Specialist in the Office for Strategic Development and Partnerships within the Division of Neuroscience at NIA.  She supports programmatic efforts aimed at achieving the research goals of the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease, especially those pertaining to brain aging, Alzheimer's disease, and related dementias. These efforts emphasize improving rigor and reproducibility in translational research as well as encouraging open-science practices in order to accelerate development of effective therapies for AD and related dementias. She also curates articles for the Alzheimer’s Disease Preclinical Efficacy Database (AlzPED).

Dr. Viswanathan completed her Bachelor of Technology in Biotechnology from SASTRA University in India, followed by a Master of Science in Neuroscience at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She completed her Ph.D in Neuroscience at a CNRS lab (CerCo) at the University of Toulouse in France where she investigated the neural mechanisms that underlie auditory perception and long-term memory. She extended these findings during her post-doctoral fellowship at the Neural Systems Laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park, using neurophysiological techniques to understand age-related changes in the response properties of neurons in auditory and frontal cortices. She is passionate about making neuroscience accessible and engaging to the public, especially young minds, and is the author and illustrator of Baby Senses: A Sensory Neuroscience Primer for All Ages.