Engineering the Mind: Kiera Fleck’s Journey into the Neuroscience of Alcohol and Myelination
- Diba Riahi
- Jan 14
- 4 min read
When you ask fourth-year neuroscience Ph.D. student Kiera Fleck what drew her to study the brain, she doesn’t start with lab work or equations. She starts at home.
“I actually got into neuroscience because I have a brother with special needs,” she says. “My whole life I volunteered with different organizations working with special needs kids.” Growing up in Chandler, Arizona, she worked with the MORIAH Cooperative, a local nonprofit that paired peer mentors with children with special needs for shared activities. “I always had a foot in the special needs community and volunteering that way,” she explains, “but I never really put it together that that’s what I wanted to study until college.”
Those early experiences helped Kiera realize how personal her interest in neuroscience really was. “I was always involved in that because I lived with it every day,” she says. “Looking back, I can see that’s where my interest comes from — but at the moment, I wasn’t like, oh, neuroscience, that’s what I want to do. It took a little bit of time getting there.”
That desire to understand the brain eventually led Kiera from biomedical engineering at Arizona State University to neuroscience at Scripps Research in La Jolla, where she now studies how alcohol alters the brain’s structure at the cellular level.
Connecting Circuits: From Engineering to Neuroscience
“I did biomedical engineering as my undergraduate degree,” she says. “I really liked biology. I wanted a practical degree after high school that I could get a job with immediately.”
But while Kiera’s engineering background gave her technical fluency, her curiosity about the brain demanded something more human. “When I came into my Ph.D., I was really interested in neuropsychiatric disease,” she says. “This can include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and a lot of people don’t know that substance use disorders, including alcohol use disorder, are considered neuropsychiatric diseases.”
She rotated through several labs — one studying neurodegeneration, another aging — before landing in her current project, which investigates alcohol’s impact on the brain’s wiring. “My project is titled ‘Investigating the Role of BK Channels in the Effect of Alcohol on Myelination,’” she explains. “We know that chronic heavy alcohol drinking results in the loss of white matter in the brain — or myelin. But we don’t know how.”
Her research zeroes in on BK channels, a type of ion channel that may help explain how alcohol interferes with myelination. “My project is trying to figure out the target of alcohol in the brain that is causing this loss of myelin,” she says. “This project has the potential to be relevant not only for people with alcohol use disorder, but maybe even people with other demyelinating disorders such as multiple sclerosis.”
Charting a Future at the Intersection of Science and Engineering
After four years in the lab, Kiera’s sights are set on industry. Her dream role would fuse her dual passions — neuroscience and engineering. “I would love to tie in my engineering undergraduate experience if possible,” she says. “The most well-known example is Neuralink. That ties neuroscience together with engineering, and I think that’s the intersection of what my interests would be.”
She’s quick to add that such intersections are becoming the new normal. “I think there’s going to be less and less distinction between the two and more overlap,” Kiera says. “I’m really glad I did the engineering.”
On Curiosity, Courage, and Career Advice
Kiera laughs when asked what advice she’d give to young scientists — her answer sounds like the voice of experience. “You’re not in a rush to figure out what you want to do,” she says. “Try your hand at several different things.”
Her own career began with a leap into the unknown. “The summer after my freshman year of college, I did an internship called the Banner-ASU Neuroscience Scholars Program,” she recalls. “That was my first lab experience, my first really hands-on neuroscience experience, and that’s where I realized I loved it.”
Since then, her path has included work in cancer biology, neurodegeneration, and psychiatric disease. “The variety of experience I have has only been a strength in my career,” she says. “It’s great if you know exactly what you want to do and go all in on that, but if you don’t, there’s no pressure. Just try a bunch of things and see what sticks.”
Outside the Lab: Rock Walls and Piano Keys
When she’s not analyzing brain tissue or reading data, Kiera’s somewhere outdoors. “Since coming to San Diego, everyone’s so outdoorsy here, and the weather is perfect and beautiful, so I’ve gotten into rock climbing actually,” she laughs. “For some reason, that’s a hobby that a lot of grad students do — and I think it’s so fun.”
“I love going to the beach. I love swimming. I love hiking,” she says, before admitting her downtime isn’t all lab coats and chalk dust. “I’ve been watching Criminal Minds. I love Silicon Valley — it’s my favorite show. It’s a comedy about a bunch of nerdy geeky engineers, and maybe that’s why I like it.”
Music and baking also make the list. “I grew up playing piano, so I really enjoy that,” she says. “Baking, love baking. I’ve gotten into cooking a lot more.”
Whether she’s composing melodies, perfecting a recipe, or scaling cliffs along the coast, Kiera approaches every challenge with the same mix of patience and curiosity. Her research may focus on how alcohol reshapes the brain, but her story is proof of something deeper—that the best science starts with empathy, persistence, and the courage to keep exploring.
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