Ralda Nehme is an institute scientist and principal investigator in the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she also directs the stem cell program. Her research is focused on investigating the genetic, cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions. The Nehme lab uses human stem cell based models, genome editing technologies and image-based, electrophysiological and genetics approaches to examine cellular phenotypes linked to human genetic variation. Through a large collaborative effort, she and her colleagues have established a key resource of human pluripotent stem cells and genetic data from hundreds of donors, aimed at expanding the scalability of experimental systems and understanding how specific genetic variants influence cellular phenotypes.

Nehme received her B.S. from the American University of Beirut. She completed her Ph.D. at Dartmouth College, where she studied neuronal development in C. elegans. She then conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University, where she became interested in modeling psychiatric disease and developed efficient methods to generate human stem cell-derived neural cells.