Travis E. Faust is an instructor in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. He received a bachelor of arts in molecular biology from Princeton University and a doctorate in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University, where he trained with Akira Sawa. During his doctoral studies, he investigated the role of astrocytes in psychiatric disorders. As a postdoctoral researcher with Dorothy Schafer at UMass Chan, he studied how microglia and astrocytes coordinate activity-dependent synapse remodeling. Using sensory deprivation paradigms in the rodent somatosensory cortex, Faust uncovered a mechanism in which microglia signal to astrocytes through Wnt signaling, inducing astrocytes to retract their perisynaptic processes and allowing microglia to engulf and remove synapses. Extending this line of research, he aims to determine how microglia and astrocytes coordinate synapse refinement across development and how disruption of these mechanisms contributes to autism spectrum disorder and related neurodevelopmental disorders.