Meet Our Trainees

My research broadly examines co-occurring substance use, internalizing disorders, and related correlates, with a focus on identifying underlying transdiagnostic mechanisms. I am also interested in exploring how we can leverage protective factors in clinical interventions for comorbid substance use and internalizing pathology. Further, much of my work focuses on psychometric evaluations of measures of substance use problems, as accurate assessment is key to better understanding and treating substance use disorders.

Main Mentor: Samantha Farris, Ph.D.; Teresa Leyro, Ph.D.

I am interested in how systematic biases in decision making promote drug relapse. Particularly, I am interested in how people with addictions’ beliefs about the negative outcomes of their drug use influence preventive behaviors to minimize these outcomes, a question I aim to pursue at the inter- as well as intra-individual level using a combination of behavioral experiments, neuroimaging, and experience sampling in a “real-world” population.

Main Mentor: Anna Konova, Ph.D.

Understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of known risk factors for alcohol use disorder (AUD) provides one avenue for developing potential therapeutics. Human clinical work indicates that the stimulant and sedative responses to alcohol represent risk factors for the development of AUD. Human neuroimaging studies and preclinical work both implicate the dorsal striatum as an important regulator of EtOH’s stimulant and sedative effects. I am currently using mouse models of alcohol-induced stimulation and sedation to explore the role of striatal astrocytes in modulating neuronal activity to produce these and other alcohol-related behaviors, such as home-cage alcohol drinking.

Main Mentor: Rafiq Huda, Ph.D.

My research focuses on the neurobiological and pharmacological mechanisms underlying motivational disorders, with a specific emphasis on eating behaviors. I investigate how neural circuits, particularly those involving the orexin system and sigma-1 receptors, regulate behaviors like binge eating and reward-driven food consumption. Using a combination of behavioral assays, neuroanatomical tracing, and operant conditioning, I explore how these circuits are influenced by high-fat diets and pharmacological interventions. My work also extends to understanding patient perceptions of pharmacotherapies for binge eating and weight management, blending preclinical and clinical research to inform the development of novel therapeutic strategies.

Main Mentor: Dr. Morgan H. James

Jahnayah is a graduate student in the Clinical Psychology PsyD program at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology (GSAPP). Her research interests include minority mental health, women’s health, health equity, and health promotion. Her current research has focused on black community health relating to substance use and trauma.

Main Mentor: Alexandria Bauer, Ph.D.

I am a graduate student in the Behavioral & Systems Neuroscience PhD program within the Department of Psychology. I am broadly interested in genetic influences on the development of substance use and related externalizing disorders during emerging adulthood. I am also interested in the prevention/intervention of college student substance use.

Main Mentor: Danielle Dick, Ph.D.

As a former public defender and psychologist-in-training, Tamina believes in utilizing a multidisciplinary approach to mitigate the adverse effects of an oppressive legal system to promote healing and repair on the individual, community, and systems levels. She aims to contribute practical tools and resources to those who have been disproportionately targeted by the inequities in the criminal justice system.

Main Mentor: Tanya Saraiya, Ph.D.

My research focuses on signaling pathways that promote orexin system plasticity in rat models of cocaine addiction and sucrose bingeing.

Main Mentor: Dr. Gary Aston-Jones

Michael is interested in harm reduction and health disparities for people experiencing homelessness, specifically assessing and addressing substance use disorder-related morbidity and mortality for people experiencing chronic homelessness. His research to date has focused on medications for opioid use disorder programs and policy, peer interventions for people with substance use disorders, and overdose education and naloxone distribution program design. His dissertation focuses on the documentation of homelessness in Medicaid claims.

Main Mentor: Andrew Peterson, Ph.D.

My research has three key interrelated domains, largely focused on cannabis and alcohol use. First, I am interested in improving assessment of cannabis use, especially quantity, method, and potency. Secondly, my work focuses on indicators of use and maintaining factors such as motives, risk perceptions, attitudes, impulsivity, and social disparities. My third area of interest is related to treatment including modifications to brief substance use interventions and treatment for persons with co-occurring posttraumatic stress disorder and substance use disorders. I have an overarching interest in methodology and statistical analyses that informs my work across these three domains.

Main Mentor: Angelo DiBello, Ph.D.

I’m interested in combining tools from psychology, neuroscience, and economics to characterize how attention (and other cognitive processes) drive valuation of and craving for drug commodities in people with substance use disorders.

Main Mentor: Anna Konova, Ph.D.

My research interests center around the etiology, prevention, and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders, particularly where they intersect with substance use such as cigarette smoking. I am additionally interested in advancing the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based interventions for these disorders, with particular focus on addressing racial and ethnic inequities.

Main Mentor: Teresa Leyro, Ph.D.

I studied Dopamine Transporter (DAT) trafficking in mouse models of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) using DAT-pHluorin that was engineered in Pan Lab. I examined DAT trafficking when neurons and N2a cells were treated with psychoactive substances such as Amphetamine and Cocaine. I am also investigating the trafficking of Dopamine D2 Receptor (DRD2) and the regulatory mechanisms in mouse models of PD. The Pan lab has employed innovative engineering techniques to develop D2-pHmScarlet and D2-pHluorin, which serve as valuable tools for investigating how dopamine regulates the D2 receptor trafficking, signaling and their underlying mechanisms.

Main Mentor: Dr. PingYue Pan, Ph.D.

Andrew is a Ph.D. student whose research interests aim to impact the gap between the research and the clinical treatment of addictions. His interests are meant to generate clinically relevant measurements of relapse, harms, and recovery in addictions and across recovery goals for intervention research and program evaluation. His work is meant to further develop non-abstinence-based theoretical and conceptual frameworks of recovery. He hopes to leverage data science approaches such as Machine Learning and AI to bridge the gap. He has been a practicing clinician in addiction treatment in NJ since 2020. He has been an invited speaker on topics ranging from conditions in incarceration, reentry, and the stigma of addiction.

Main Mentor: Dr. Lia Nower, Ph.D.

Using methods of neuroeconomics and decision-making neuroscience, I study the behavior of human drug-addiction. Specifically, I focus on the longitudinal behavioral and neural changes that occur in people with opioid use disorder. I use value-based decision-making tasks to parameterize specific traits and states like riskiness, learning rate, and range adaptation. These can be used in turn with fMRI data to interpret the activity of key regions of interest like the ventral medial prefrontal cortex and the striatum.

Main Mentor: Anna Konova, Ph.D.

I am a New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science (NJ ACTS) Predoctoral Fellow, funded through the NIH Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA). My research aims to identify risk factors for externalizing disorders through genetically informed research designs. My current projects utilize data from the FinnTwin cohorts, a population-based, longitudinal study of Finnish twins focused on the correlates and consequences of alcohol use from adolescence through early midlife. After completion of my PhD, I hope to inform prevention and intervention programs for substance abuse and criminality in adolescents.

Main Mentor: Jessica Salvatore, Ph.D.

Substance use disorder (SUDs) frequently co-occur with other forms of psychopathology, including externalizing and internalizing disorders. In my research, I study the phenotypic relationships among these forms of psychopathology and the shared genetic influences that give rise to these relationships. My goal is to integrate phenotypic classification with statistical genetics studies to improve gene discovery for SUDs and co-occurring forms of psychopathology and advance the development of precision medicine.

Main Mentor: Dr. Danielle Dick

Stress pathology is implicated in maladaptive coping techniques that can lead to development of substance use disorders and increases relapse risk during recovery. Biobehavioral interventions can be used to modulate a hyperactive stress system and redirect cognitive resources to recovery tools. I use a full-body approach, assessing the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, the baroreflex feedback loop, and neural reactivity to map stress pathology as it relates to substance use. Greater comprehension of the dysregulated resting-and-reactive stress response provides a mechanism of behavior change on which to act and improve substance use outcomes.

Main Mentor: Marsha Bates, Ph.D.; Jennifer Buckman, Ph.D.

My research characterizes the imbalance between cognitive processes underlying the perception of risk/uncertainty and positive valence systems subserving maladaptive reward-seeking in psychosis-spectrum and affective disorders. This work has characterized this deficit across behavioral risk-taking tasks and identified aberrations in associated networks of brain regions (e.g., nucleus accumbens, insula, anterior cingulate cortex) using functional imaging in clinical and non-clinical samples.

Main Mentor: David Zald

In relation to addiction specifically, my research interests are focused on the perceptions and stigma on substance abuse disorders and drug use, and its impact on sentencing, treatment and policies. I am also interested in investigating the public perceptions on rehabilitation of defendants with substance abuse disorders and the levels of support for policies in the criminal-legal system such as problem solving courts.

Main Mentor: Colleen M. Berryessa, Ph.D.

My current research focuses broadly on the overlapping circuits and neural mechanisms that underlie anxiety-related disorders, such as PTSD, and substance use disorders. Specifically, I combine rodent behavioral paradigms with ex vivo electrophysiological recordings to examine how experiences such as cocaine self-administration or fear conditioning influence synaptic plasticity in the reward and limbic circuitry and how these changes contribute to the generation of maladaptive memories and behaviors. A goal of my research is to investigate the distinct molecular and synaptic changes that underlie the high rates of comorbidity across these classes of disorders. Utilizing behavioral pharmacology and optogenetic approaches, I aim to develop more effective therapeutic approaches for addiction and PTSD by specifically targeting aberrant synaptic changes.

Main Mentor: Chris Pierce, Ph.D.

Syed is currently working on his senior honors thesis under the supervision of Dr. Anna Konova & Ph.D. candidate Emmanuel E. Alvarez (RWJ). His honors thesis is focused on modeling the best way to think about updating in Optimism Bias within the context of an Ecological Momentary Assessment task and trying to understand how the different decision making parameters such as Risk Tolerance, Ambiguity Tolerance, Optimism Bias, & Delayed Discounting interact with each other in subjects who suffer from Opioid Use Disorder. In addition to work dedicated to his honors thesis, Syed is also involved in trying to computationally model Optimism Bias using a Bayesian and Reinforcement Learning approach.

Main Mentor: Anna Konova, Ph.D.

I study neural mechanisms of decisions that involve choosing a preferred option over others, known as economic decisions, which are compromised in individuals suffering from addiction disorders. I investigate mechanisms of economic decisions using local field potentials (LFP) of monkeys’ orbitofrontal cortex. I focus on LFP because 1) it can uncover mechanisms not evident in the neuronal spiking data, the typical way of exploring decision processes, and 2) it opens the possibility of translating rich animal electrophysiological findings to humans, as high-frequency LFPs are strongly related to the signals measured non-invasively in humans. My ultimate research aim is to bridge animal and human neurophysiological findings.

Main Mentor: Vincent B. McGinty, Ph.D.

I study perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors related to nicotine and tobacco. I’m particularly interested in designing and testing effective harm reduction communication for established adult smokers.

Main Mentor: Olivia Wackowski, Ph.D., MPH; Julia Chen-Sankey, Ph.D., MPP; Michelle Jeong, Ph.D.