Research descriptions

I am a neuropharmacologist with a research focus on the neurobiology and treatment of mood disorders, a category of clinical diagnoses that include major depressive disorder (MDD), bipolar disorder, and postpartum depression. Symptoms of mood disorders are pervasive, affecting basic daily functions such as length and quality of sleep, eating patterns, the ability to derive pleasure from life, and even the desire to live. Indeed, over 800,000 individuals die by suicide each year, which equates to 1.4% of worldwide deaths. While available treatments for mood disorders are adequate for some patients, the majority of patients never attain sustained remission. Moreover, many patients are fundamentally refractory to currently available treatments, and for most patients response time takes many weeks, if not months. Many patients inevitably slip further into depression or experience increased suicidal thoughts (or succumb to them) while waiting for medications to take effect. My research program is translational, spanning the gap between basic and clinical neuroscience, focused on utilizing basic science approaches to optimize the therapeutic potential of interventions for the treatment of mood disorders. Ongoing studies in my laboratory rely primarily upon rodent behavioral tests/models of affective and anxiety disorders, mouse genetic models, as well as human molecular genetics with the anticipation that information from combining these approaches will inform translation to patients.

For more information about me and the lab, please see the following newsletter which contains an in-depth Q&A faculty spotlight!