Marina Rachel Picciotto (born June 22, 1963) is an American neuroscientist known for her work on the role of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in addiction, memory, and reward behaviors.

[3] Born in Bloomington, Indiana on June 22, 1963, Picciotto moved to New York City as an infant and graduated from Hunter College High School in 1981.

[4] She went on to PhD work with Paul Greengard at Rockefeller University where she cloned the gene for calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase 1[5] As a Human Frontier Science Program postdoctoral fellow with Jean-Pierre Changeux at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, Picciotto produced the first mouse knock-out lacking a nicotinic receptor subunit.

[6] She returned to the United States in 1995 to join the Yale University faculty as an assistant professor and rising through the ranks to become the Charles B.G.

After taking over leadership at the journal, she instituted a number of changes including eliminating submission fees for Society for Neuroscience members[9] and restoring the ability of authors to publish supplementary data alongside their papers.

[13] President Bill Clinton presented Picciotto with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers at the White House in 2000.