Polina was born in Leningrad, USSR but grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia. She got her BS in Physics from St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University in 2003, and then spent a year as a researcher at the Los Alamos National Lab working on solar cells composed of semiconductor nanocrystals. She completed her PhD in Materials Science at MIT in 2009 with her thesis dedicated to physics-driven design of light-emitting devices based on organic materials and quantum dots. The curiosity towards biology led her to a postdoctoral fellowship in Neuroscience and Bioengineering at Stanford, where she began creating optoelectronic devices for recording and stimulation of neural activity. In 2011, Polina returned to MIT to start Bioelectronics group. The remarkable efforts of the group members have led to her tenure in 2017. In addition to the neural interface research, she is passionate about superheroes, and she uses their superpowers to help with teaching of undergraduate and graduate classes in the fields of electronics, photonics, and magnetism. Outside work, Polina is a committed distance runner and an enthusiastic rock climber.