Leah Acker was a Medical Engineering/Medical Physics Ph.D. student at MIT and Harvard Medical School through the Harvard/MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. She was an NSF graduate fellow, an NDSEG fellow, and a 2008 recipient of the NIH/American Auditory Society Graduate Research Award for her master's work on tinnitus (EECS, MIT). Her projects involved the invention and application of new technologies for less-invasive neuromodulation, and the study of optogenetic control of brain circuits. She then went on to Duke for the MD program.