SUPRA Spotlights

What is your educational background? 

I am a late bloomer and had a pretty non-linear path to research. I have a bachelor's degree in art history from Loyola University of Chicago, then I was a VISTA/Americorps volunteer and realized that I really enjoyed community-building and advocacy related work. I returned to school to become a nurse and was an Obstetrics/Maternal Child Health nurse at UK for a decade and kept returning to school and getting more involved in community and public health education. I finished my PhD at UK in 2018 with a focus on building reproductive autonomy as a means to empower people who can get pregnant and improve maternal/child health. I have also worked with UK's Shoulder to Shoulder Global health group since 2009, supplementing primary care with long term partners in Ecuador, expanding our engagement with UK and Ecuadorian students in interprofessional health education.

What is your current position? 

I am an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing and Chair of Global Affairs for our college. 

Please describe your overall research program.

My work has primarily been about building solidarity and empowering others to reduce barriers to reproductive and perinatal health. Why did you choose this research area? People who use drugs have the greatest unmet need for contraception and family planning of any population, as 65-90% of their pregnancies are unintended. I am working with the recovery community to reduce barriers to planning or preventing a pregnancy, with the long-term goal of improving recovery capital and maternal/child health.

What specific research project are you most excited about working on right now?

I have really enjoyed learning about and partnering with amazing advocates in the recovery and harm reduction communities. We are working on training "champion" peer recovery coaches to work with participants to get the care they deserve, ideally this will lead to earlier intervention in reproductive and perinatal healthcare spaces. 

Do you have any advice for trainees or early career researchers?

Keep at it, non-linear pathways have their advantages. Listen to/partner with people with lived experience and bring their voice/stories to our academic and research spaces even if it means slowing down and working iteratively.  

Please describe where you are in your training. Why did you choose to train in your selected area?

I am a fourth year Experimental Psychology PhD student within the Cognitive Neuroscience program. I chose this program because of my general interest in cognition and UK’s notoriety for research relevant to substance use disorders.

Please describe your overall research interests.

I’m broadly interested in the identification and targeting of novel predictors and consequences of harmful drinking behaviors. My graduate research has so far been focused on sleep as a predictor of alcohol consumption and whether targeting sleep can improve drinking outcomes. In addition to this, I am now focusing on the consequences of drinking on sleep and cognition.

What specific research project are you most excited working on about right now?

I’m presently working on my dissertation project where I am gaining valuable training in human behavioral pharmacology and polysomnography. I hope to leverage this unique training to start an independent line of research focused on the intersection of substance use, sleep, and cognition.

What advice do you have for other trainees?

UK is a highly collaborative environment that is home to many of the leading researchers in the field of substance use. Take advantage of this amazing environment and the opportunities that SUPRA offers.

What programs or opportunities would you like to see SUPRA add for trainees?

I believe that SUPRA has done a fantastic job at providing useful opportunities for trainees. Examples of these include the annual SURE conference, guest lecture series throughout the academic year, funding opportunities, and Local NIDA events. If SUPRA were to add additional programs or opportunities, I believe these should be related to career development. Examples might include things like grant writing workshops, resources for navigating different job markets (post-doctoral fellowships, academia, private sector, etc.), or perhaps additional opportunities for networking, collaboration, and interdisciplinary training with other researchers here at UK.

What is your educational background? 

During my undergraduate program in Civil Engineering at the National Central University in Taiwan, I really enjoyed working on computer simulation and modeling. After a few years later, my career interest changed. I was getting more and more interested in healthcare. This change prompted me to consider attending a master’s program in Health Administration (MHA) at the University of Missouri-Columbia. During my MHA program in 2004, I was involved in a project to adopt telehealth in a hospital-based home health agency. This experience sparked my interests in telehealth or eHealth in general. After a brief search, I came across eHealth research by Dr. David H. Gustafson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and felt his research was just fascinating. In 2006, I was fortunate to enter his doctoral program in Industrial Engineering and work with him in eHealth/mobile health (mHealth) research projects. During that time, I worked in one of the earliest mHealth projects for alcohol addiction patients. We developed a smartphone app, called A-CHESS (Addiction-Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System). Several projects later came out of this one. I am still working in one of them today.

What is your current position? 

After completing my doctoral study, I started my first academic career as an assistant professor at UK. I am currently an associate professor in the Department of Health and Clinical Sciences at the College of Health Sciences. I am also a member in the Cancer Prevention and Control program at the Markey Cancer Center.

Please describe your overall research program. Why did you choose this research area?

My current research focuses on mHealth. I study how mobile technology (e.g., smartphones or wearables) can support patients with serious illnesses, such as cancer and addiction. I am interested in learning how to best develop, test, implement, and disseminate an mHealth intervention. The main reason why I choose this research area is because there are gaps in healthcare and patients do not usually receive the best quality care and/or services. Mobile technology, due to its ubiquitous nature, remote connectivity, computing power, and increased ownership, may offer a good solution to fill these gaps. However, it is not easy to develop and deploy a mHealth intervention. There are many factors affecting the success of such interventions. Figuring out these factors and being able to offer the needed support to patients motivate me to move forward with my research.

What specific research project are you most excited about working on right now? 

All my mHealth research projects are unique and exciting. Each project addresses unique gaps in our current health systems. In some projects, advanced wearables, such as smartwatches or wireless blood pressure monitors, are also used. However, the exciting part to me are not about the novelty or variety of the technology. I am most excited about finding better ways to design and integrate these mHealth interventions into health systems and see people’s lives improve. In one of the projects, we recruited people who struggled a bit with alcohol use from the community and randomized them into one of the three intervention programs with different levels of integration between our smartphone app and the community peer support or the primary care. The main research question is which model out of these three (the app only, the app plus peer support, and the app plus primary care) would be the most cost-effective program. This type of research is really interesting to me.

Do you have any advice for trainees or early career researchers? 

Yes, I hope three suggestions are not too many. Here they are. Work on something that really excites you. If you don’t currently have one, keep your eyes open and keep looking. The last but not the least, work with the people that you really enjoy working with.

Please describe where you are in your training. Why did you choose to train in your selected area? 

I am a PhD candidate starting my third year in the laboratory of Dr. Ilhem Messaoudi. I enrolled in the College of Pharmacy’s graduate program because of a strong interest in drug design. This interest was fostered by my undergraduate research mentor who, because of a terminal illness, emphasized and promoted the unmet need for available medical treatment options for rare or complex diseases. However, after beginning my studies, I found myself interested in better understanding the biological systems that are responsible for regulating disease states, particularly the immune system. The highly collaborative nature of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Graduate Program allowed me to complete research rotations in laboratories within the College of Medicine, where I met Dr. Ilhem Messaoudi, who had just moved her laboratory from the University of California Irvine to take the Chair position in the department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics (MIMG). After completing my rotation, it was evident that Dr. Messaoudi’s values, mentorship style, and goals best aligned with my work ethic, education and professional goals, and personality. I became very interested in her project studying the effects of alcohol misuse on the immune system as I grew up in a small rural community in the Appalachian Mountains that was burdened with a high incidence of substance misuse.

Please describe your overall research interests. 

It is well established that chronic heavy drinking (CHD) negatively impacts the innate immune system. Studies have shown that CHD dysregulates the functional profiles of monocytes and macrophages and rewires their transcriptional and epigenetic landscapes, skewing them towards a hyper-inflammatory phenotype. Aberrant inflammatory myeloid cell responses (Kupffer cells, splenic and alveolar macrophages, microglia) contribute to the pathophysiology of alcohol-induced organ damage and alcohol use disorder. While abstinence reverses some organ damage, 75% of individuals who attempt to stop alcohol misuse, resume drinking within one year and increase their consumption upon re-exposure. Despite the known role of monocytes/macrophages in CHD-induced organ damage, no studies have addressed how successive abstinence and post-abstinence drinking effects these cells. For my thesis work, I am interested in investigating the stability of CHD-induced changes after a one-month period of abstinence (to mimic a residential treatment duration), and after repeated abstinence and post-abstinence drinking periods, a common complication in the treatment of alcohol use disorder. I believe information gained from this study can help to improve addiction treatment policies as well as pave the way for potential therapeutics that can alleviate CHD-induced organ damage not reversed by abstinence.

What specific research project are you most excited working on right now?

I am most excited about the epigenetic component of my dissertation project. Epigenetic modifications have been identified and utilized as drug targets for diseases such as cancer. I am actively working to acquire next generation sequencing wet lab techniques (Single Cell Assay for Transposase Accessible Cells and Cut Under Target and Tagmentation) and learn bioinformatic analysis pipelines to uncover how CHD alters the epigenetic landscape of circulating monocytes. I am excited to uncover what epigenetic changes from CHD are long-lasting and could be used as new targets for improving current treatment options for alcohol misuse.

What advice do you have for other trainees? 

Left foot, right foot, breathe. There will be days when your experiments fail, your cells die, your grant isn’t funded, and your paper gets rejected—they are inevitable. It is important to remember that these days are not what define who you are as a person or a scientist, it is how you respond and work to overcome the obstacles that matter.

What programs or opportunities would you like to see SUPRA add for trainees?

I think it would be very advantageous if SUPRA would establish events such as writing ‘bootcamps,’ short lecture series, or a mentorship program focused on guiding/helping trainees acquire funding to support their research. Learning how to effectively and efficiently communicate your science and obtain funding to support your research endeavors is a difficult task. Trainees could greatly benefit from guidance on how to submit successful fellowship applications, pilot grant awards, etc.

What is your educational background? 

I have an undergraduate degree in political science from Tulane University in New Orleans. I have a masters of social work degree from the University of Georgia and a PhD in Social Work from Florida State University.

What is your current position? 

I am a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the College of Medicine at UK where I also serve as the Director of Research. I joined the Department in February of this year.

Please describe your overall research program. Why did you choose this research area?

I am a behavioral clinical trials intervention researcher with a focus on mental health, HIV, substance use, and suicide prevention. My work focuses primarily the development of interventions for adolescents and young adults. When I was in graduate school at FSU, I worked for a research institute focused on evaluation of programs for individuals involved with the criminal justice system who had challenges with substance use.  It was through this work that I began to appreciate how important it is to both find effective ways to intervene with those struggling with substance use but also to identify ways to do effective prevention. I began to shift my career focus after graduate school and received a K Award from NIDA to expand my skills as an intervention researcher. Over the past twenty years of doing this work, it is exciting to see the progress that has been made as well as the opportunities that still exist in the field.

What specific research project are you most excited about working on right now? 

Right now, I have just started the launch of a large cluster randomized trial focused on LGBTQ+ suicide prevention funded by PCORI. 

Do you have any advice for trainees or early career researchers? 

My main piece of advice is to follow your passion and pick the projects where you feel that you can make a difference. At the end of the day, I think as researchers it is about making a difference in people’s lives.

Please describe where you are in your training. Why did you choose to train in your selected area? 

I am a graduate student beginning my 3^rd year of training in the Department of Pharmacology and Nutritional sciences. My interest in addiction neuroscience stems from the curiosity I have for how and why drugs work to change behavior. These interests were further heightened by experiences working as a pharmacy technician and pursing my undergraduate degree in Neuroscience.

Please describe your overall research interests. 

My overall interested is in how the brain works and understanding what changes occur that alter its function, and ways to reverse these changes.

What specific research project are you most excited working on about right now?

My current project is exploring how certain neuroimmune signaling pathways are suppressed by nicotine in a sex-specific fashion, and potential ways to regulate these pathways by therapeutics (for example, progesterone) is very exciting for me. It could potentially help to explain why smoking cessation methods have sex-specific efficacy, while also providing future directions for better cessation aids that are individualized.   

What advice do you have for other trainees? 

The best advice I have for other trainees is to always keep an open mind, and strive to step out of and expand your comfort zone. Doing so has provided me with many great opportunities and experiences that I would have otherwise never received.

What programs or opportunities would you like to see SUPRA add for trainees?

I would like to see more opportunities or programs enhance networking and mentoring for trainees within the substance use field here at UK. I believe that some of the best ideas can come from communicating and networking with others that many not be in your specific level of analysis, but may have a translational understanding of your research projects.

What is your educational background?

I graduated from Guilford College, a small liberal arts school in Greensboro, NC, with a B.A. degree in Psychology. I went on to graduate school at Georgetown University in Washington, DC for my Ph.D in Neuroscience. After that, I spent six years training as a postdoctoral fellow at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and at the University of Pennsylvania.  

What is your current position?

I joined the UK College of Medicine in 2019 and I am currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience.

Please describe your overall research program. Why did you choose this research area?

My research focus is on neurophysiology of drug use and it really grows out from a combination of both my graduate and post-doctoral interests. As a Ph.D. student, I examined how biophysical properties of ion channels influence excitability of neurons in the cerebellum and the hippocampus. This was research at a quite basic, molecular, lever with a heavy emphasis on how structural differences of receptor channels influence kinetics (i.e. timing) of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic signals. I spent a lot of time at the microscope and around electrophysiology equipment, literally chasing single cells in brain slices with a tiny glass electrode, recording synaptic currents, action potentials, and thinking how electrical events orchestrate all of the animals’ daily experience. I loved every moment of it, but I suppose it was then that I realized I did not have a good understanding of the higher order, experiential, aspects of neuroscience research. By some chance, I was also reading a lot about neuronal organization in the striatum and its influence on substance use and was introduced to Dr. Chris Pierce, an addiction researcher at the University of Pennsylvania (interestingly, a UK graduate!). Just as I was thinking my research was missing behavioral observations, Chris was thinking his research would benefit from the more mechanistic neuronal signaling insights. So, I ended up with a post-doctoral position and the rest is, as they say, history. My current research uses electrophysiology approaches to uncover how cocaine and fentanyl impact neuronal plasticity in the ventral striatum and a few other brain regions. We are particularly interested in how neurons may encode behavioral contingencies of drug use: for example, short or extended withdrawal from the drug, or mechanisms of hyper-motivation to engage in drug-seeking. We are also developing in vitro and in vivo Ca²⁺ imaging approaches in the lab to examine how drug use impacts neuronal organization at the network level. 

What specific research project are you most excited about working on right now?

There are several active areas of research in the lab. One of the most recent ones has to do with the role that serotonin receptors play in cognitive deficits associated with cocaine use. There has been a lot of interest in recent years on the potential of various hallucinogens as therapeutics for substance use. This follows clinical success of ketamine, a mild hallucinogen that also impacts serotonin levels, in the treatment of drug-resistant depression. We are currently examining whether signaling at specific serotonin receptors subtypes may account for impaired cognitive flexibility after cocaine exposure in a rat self-administration model. Another exciting project explores potassium channel signaling in animals that display escalated fentanyl use. Escalation of use, a behavioral pattern whereby progressively higher doses of the drug are being consumed, is a robust predictor of opioid use disorder diagnosis in humans. Previous data from my lab suggested that individual variability in motivation for reward could be linked to voltage-gated potassium channel plasticity. We hypothesized that escalated fentanyl use may be linked to excessive behavioral motivation and developed a pipeline to profile activity of more than 100 different potassium channel subtypes to explore this hypothesis. This project is conducted in collaboration with Drs. Michael Bardo (Psychology, College of Arts & Sciences) and Jill Turner (College of Pharmacy). Finally, I am also very excited about the various projects in the lab that deal with neuroglial interactions in the context of drug use. Even before coming to UK, my lab was keenly interested in how neuronal activity can be directed by astrocytes. Our research, as well as that of many others, continues to provide evidence that astrocytes exercise a much more substantial influence over neuronal activity than they have been previously thought able to. For example, we find that cocaine exposure dramatically elevates astrocytic release of glutamate, the main excitatory neurotransmitter. This happens across a number of brain areas and may persist through extended periods of withdrawal from cocaine, raising the possibility that astrocytes could be responsible for the long-term behavioral effects of cocaine exposure.

Do you have any advice for trainees or early career researchers?

 My main advice for the trainees and early career researchers is to not forget the reasons they started on the scientific career track. It is easy to get lost in the daily grind of classes, lab work, data analysis, writing, etc. It can sometimes feel as if months or years of work have not brought you closer to fully answering questions that you set out with. At times like these, I am reminded of famous observations that “science moves in small steps” and that we all “stand on the shoulders of giants”. I don’t think that it is too much of a stretch to say that in the 21^st century the giant shoulder is a collective one, of scientists as a group. There is certainly an element of luck in science, but luck is also a matter of perspective, so do not lose your enthusiasm, feed your creativity, build a network of colleagues that you can collaborate with, and make plans with a bright future in mind.

Please describe where you are in your training. Why did you choose to train in your selected area? 

I am in my second year of my postdoc fellowship. I am funded through the CCTS TL1 award to conduct a research project that I proposed with my mentor, Dr. Mikhail Koffarnus. In our office, we have a bar (yes, a bar!) where we run our self-administration studies. Participants have the opportunity to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes in the bar lab. In my project, we are running a laboratory-based contingency management procedure. Participants are run through a variety of conditions, which involve providing small incentives across several intervals for abstinence from drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, or both. Our goal is to identify the predictors of success in contingency management. Long term, we’d like to build an incentive-optimizing tool that can be used to prescribe the optimal monetary incentive to use in a contingency management protocol.

Since I can remember, I have always been interested in conducting research in the area of substance use. Perhaps this interest came from the very real substance misuse I observed in members of my family and close friend groups. Witnessing this has always burned a fire under me to try and help people where I can see that the systems are failing. During graduate school, I got my first experience with contingency management with a population of participants who were living with HIV and had a history of opiate- or cocaine-misuse. I also collaborated on several projects in which we investigated the underlying processes involved in contingency management and how behavioral economic techniques can be used to quantify human decision making. However, none of these experiments were directly evaluating substance use. When I learned about Micky’s lab and the work he was doing, I knew this would be an amazing opportunity for me to gain extra training to strengthen my expertise and get involved with populations of current substance users.

Please describe your overall research interests. 

I am interested in improving the lives and health of individuals living with substance use disorders and other related diagnoses/behavioral problems. One of my main interests is in improving contingency management from start to finish. By this, I mean that it isn’t just about improving the intervention. I think there’s a major gap in between research and practice. Much of what drives me is the opportunity to improve this intervention so that we can show policymakers exactly how this intervention should run with any given individual, and how clinicians should roll it out. Thus, in addition to the research side, I am very interested in how to get policymakers to adopt this intervention for clinical practice and advocate for adequate insurance funding.

I am a board certified behavior analyst (BCBA), and another related interest of mine is closing the gap between research and practice in the behavior analytic world. Applied behavior analysis is most well known as a treatment for Autism Spectrum Disorders, but as a science, Behavior Analysis has the potential to be highly effective in treating a wide range of diagnoses. My dream would be to see behavior analytic interventions used as mainstream treatments for substance use disorders.

What specific research project are you most excited working on about right now? 

There are two projects that make me super excited right now. The first is my TL1 project. I am a clinician at-heart, so getting to interact with participants and collect data on their behavior in the bar lab really excites me. I am really excited to see what the data tell us and potentially identify some predictors for success in contingency management. I am also very excited about a functional assessment survey that I have begun to develop. A functional assessment is a tool used by behavior analysts to determine why people engage in certain behaviors. For my functional assessment, I am trying to quantify why people drink alcohol. I am super excited to see what factors correlate with each of the potential functions. For example, I wonder if severity of alcohol use disorder is correlated more with an automatic/sensory function of alcohol use or a social function.

What advice do you have for other trainees? 

If there’s something that you think might interest you, dig into it and find out! Talk to people who are already doing that thing. Take opportunities to get experiences in things that aren’t part of your day-to-day as a trainee. Remember that this is an important time in your career to build experience toward the career you want long-term. Doing informational interviews with people who have different types of jobs inside and outside of academia has been super helpful for me. This has helped me better discover what it is that I want to do in my career as a Plan A, Plan B, etc. It has also helped me to seek out opportunities to get experience in areas that I think might help me to get into those careers. For example, I spoke with someone who works for the American Society of Addiction Medicine, and learned that I’d like to be more involved with the policy side of things. As a result of that conversation, I decided to join the Kentucky Advocates for Science Policy and Research (KASPR) and become a executive committee member of the Society of Postdoctoral Scholars so that I can get experience doing policy-related work.

What programs or opportunities would you like to see SUPRA add for trainees? 

I would love to more opportunities to get to know the faculty who study substance use disorders at UK. It’s really encouraging to learn how people moved through their career to get to their current positions, as it often requires resilience and pivoting when things don’t go as planned. Getting to know the faculty also helps trainees to see that people who are similar to them in aspects such as gender or race are able to find success.

What is your educational background?

BA from University of Louisville (Psychology); MA from Spalding University (Clinical Psychology); and PhD from University of Kentucky (Counseling Psychology). In addition to formal degrees, I believe my work history as a child protective services worker in Jefferson County in 2001 and my clinical training experiences in psychiatric hospitals, state and federal prisons have all shaped my training significantly. 

What is your current position?

Professor in Counseling Psychology; Associate Vice President for Research focused on Diversity and Inclusion

Please describe your overall research program. Why did you choose this research area?

My research is broadly focused on health disparities among Black American adults. Major funded projects have focused on associations between mental health, drug use, and HIV risk behaviors among incarcerated populations and understanding generational and cultural patterns influencing opioid use and drug treatment outcomes. I am also working on a project to increase PrEP uptake among Black women at high risk for HIV. Lastly, I am seeking funding to increase breastfeeding initiation rates among Black women in Kentucky. I believe I have a moral obligation to use my knowledge as a researcher to improve the lives of individuals in my own community. 

What specific research project are you most excited about working on right now?

This is a difficult question to answer because all the projects I lead I am excited about for different reasons. I am at a stage in my career that I get to choose to work on things that excite me. Professionally, I am most excited about my role leading the UNITE Research Priority Area supporting faculty and trainees and encouraging the pursuit of racial equity research across disciplines. Specific to my own research lab, I am excited about the national attention the work we are doing on the REFOCUS study has garnered. We were featured on NBC News.  We are working with a hard-to-reach group of adults, and I have a dedicated and hard-working team focused on outreach and data collection. We hope the findings from this study will inform treatment and policy to lead to better outcomes for Black Americans. 

Do you have any advice for trainees or early career researchers?

 Yes, there are three things I would say to trainees and early career researchers. First, rejection is a part of the process and persistence pays. My NIDA R01 was funded after three years and on the fourth submission. I received encouragement and valuable pearls of wisdom from Carl Leukefeld and Andrew Golub about the importance of not giving up. Second, sometimes you have to do things you do not want to do in order to learn the skills you need to learn. There were several projects that I worked on as a trainee that were not my personal passion, but they taught me extremely valuable skills that I needed in order to formulate and lead my own research studies. And third, always show gratitude to everyone that gives their time, encouragement, and helps you in any way. Gratitude goes a long way. A simple handwritten thank you note, a token gift card for coffee, any small gesture you can show someone that has given of their time to support you means a lot because this is a long journey in academia and as Maya Angelou says- "...people will never forget how you made them feel".

Please describe where you are in your training. Why did you choose to train in your selected area? 

I am starting my 4^th year in my neuroscience PhD in Dr. Pavel Ortinski's lab. I chose this lab because I wanted to study substance use disorders, and also because Dr. Ortinski was kind enough to allow me to study psychedelic hallucinogens. I got along well with Pavel from the start, and as an added bonus, he is an expert in patch clamp electrophysiology, a technique that is perfect for studying the neuronal signaling and plasticity effects of psychedelics.

Please describe your overall research interests. 

My overall research interests include uncovering if psychedelic hallucinogens can rescue drug-induced cognitive deficits, and how they cause long-term changes in the brain to do so. Many drugs of abuse, including cocaine, which I currently study, cause deficits in cognition that make users more likely to relapse. Recently, psychedelic drugs have shown promising results in human trials for increasing cognitive flexibility and helping patients abstain from drug use. Though these preliminary results are exciting, we have very little understanding of how these drugs work at a neuronal level, which is where I come in. The main techniques I use are operant chamber tasks, whole cell patch clamp electrophysiology, and calcium imaging. I believe that elucidating how these drugs work in the brain will have far-reaching implications on our understanding and treatments for substance use disorders and other serotonergic brain disorders.

What specific research project are you most excited working on about right now? 

I am most excited about my current electrophysiology project, where I am the first to explore how synaptic plasticity works in a mysterious brain area called the claustrum. The claustrum has recently been implicated in several brain diseases, including SUDs, while also having immense control of cortical excitability. Because this brain area is dense in serotonin receptors, I have been observing how serotonergic drugs effect neuronal signaling and plasticity in neurons that project to cortex. I believe this population of neurons, and serotonin signaling within the claustrum, may be vital to complex behaviors such as reward-seeking.

What advice do you have for other trainees? 

My advice for other trainees is to meet your goals by being consistent, even if that means starting with a small step. A PhD can often times be overwhelming, but if you break down what you need to do to achieve your goals, you can chip away at them little by little each day. With consistency, even if you start with small daily goals, before you know it you will have made more progress than you may have initially thought possible.

What programs or opportunities would you like to see SUPRA add for trainees? 

One of my favorite aspects of SUPRA is the annual Substance Use Research Event. In the future, I would like more similar opportunities for career development and showcasing substance use research.

What is your educational background?

I received my PhD from the University of Kentucky in Experimental Psychology, with a Behavior and Neural Studies focus area.

What is your current position?

I am now in my third year as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM) of the University of Kentucky (UK) College of Medicine. I also serve as the Director of the Kentucky Ambulatory Network, a practice-based research organization connecting medical and other professionals with research interests in primary and outpatient healthcare.

Please describe your overall research program. Why did you choose this research area?

My current work follows upon an established career as an undergraduate professor, teaching courses primarily in introductory psychology, learning/motivation/cognitive theory, and research methods. I also conducted studies in the field of comparative and behavioral psychology using animal models and even worked for a time in an endowed position that allowed me to study cognitive outcomes in clinical trials of cardiovascular therapeutics. After my spouse accepted an offer that relocated us back to the area, I joined UK in 2013 as my department’s research director. This role allowed me to grow from a novice to an experienced primary care researcher, supporting my transition to a faculty title.

Notably, my research interest is not disease specific. Rather, drawing upon my background in psychology, I have a passion for the study of underlying motivations that impact health care decisions and behaviors. My projects have spanned several topics of importance to primary care and prevention, including chronic pain and opioid treatment, lung cancer screening, transitional care, and diabetes prevention. Much of this work has centered on understanding the motivations of patients and healthcare professionals, their choices and behaviors, and ways their interactions are impacted − often utilizing mixed-methods approaches. In several projects, and currently on a large CDC-funded study on stroke care, I lead evaluation efforts and planning based on implementation science approaches.

What specific research project are you most excited about working on right now?

Easily the project I am most excited about right now is the one funded by SUPRA for faculty new to substance use research, titled “IMMA MOUD PCP” (Impact of Motivational Messaging on Activating Medications of Opioid Use Disorder in Primary Care Physicians). As background, PCPs currently represent fewer than 1 in 5 MOUD providers, even while they report equivalent outcomes to specialty centers. While patients would prefer care through their PCP, and such care could minimize travel distances and maximize support for other chronic conditions, little progress has been made to create a PCP workforce equipped to address this need. Our study is working to test the impact of different forms of messaging, targeting key external and internal motivations that might help PCPs to overcome biases and the many notable challenges they face in initiating Office Based Opioid Treatment (OBOT) services. We are working to create videos using the powerful testimony of a local Kentucky PCP who demonstrates the value of her OBOT services, both to her career and service line, and also to her sense of calling in medicine for the profound differences she sees in the lives of her patients, their families, and their communities. We will test the impact of the videos for their ability to moderate physician attitudes, intentions, and behavior, and particularly their willingness to then engage in a mentor-mentee relationship to support adoption of MOUD. This PCP’s passion for her work is infectious to my own excitement for this project and drives the hope that PCPs will take on this call toward ensuring the quality, lifelong management of OUD, just as they do with other chronic diseases.

Do you have any advice for trainees or early career researchers?

My career in research has not at all followed a straight line! You never know where your next inspiration or opportunity may come. Don’t be afraid to step outside your defined training area and comfort zone, and trust that your foundational skills will always be valuable and sought after.

Please describe where you are in your training. Why did you choose to train in your selected area? 

I am just about to complete my first year of postdoctoral training in the Healthier Futures Lab (HealthFuL) headed by Dr. Mikhail Koffarnus in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. I obtained my Ph.D. in Psychology: Behavior Analysis from Western Michigan University in 2021 where I studied how cost affects likelihood to access healthcare services and I also sometimes played with rats. I chose to train in the area of substance use, particularly alcohol use, because of how many facets of life it impacts and its relationship to my other areas of interest.

Please describe your overall research interests. 

I am just about to complete my first year of postdoctoral training in the Healthier Futures Lab (HealthFuL) headed by Dr. Mikhail Koffarnus in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. I obtained my Ph.D. in Psychology: Behavior Analysis from Western Michigan University in 2021 where I studied how cost affects likelihood to access healthcare services and I also sometimes played with rats. I chose to train in the area of substance use, particularly alcohol use, because of how many facets of life it impacts and its relationship to my other areas of interest.

What specific research project are you most excited working on about right now? 

The specific research project I’m most excited to be working on is one that is supported by the SUPRA Postdoctoral Scholar Pilot Grant I recently obtained. This allows me to gather preliminary data on the relationship between alcohol use, decision-making, suicidality, and other factors in both an online crowd-sourced sample and a treatment-seeking sample. 

What advice do you have for other trainees? 

Probably my most important advice is to remember that everyone, including yourself, is human. The pandemic helped to highlight the importance of physical and mental health (among many other things) that we in academia sometimes seem to forget, particularly when at the early stages of our careers. Remember to do things you enjoy, try to establish a supportive network, and make sure to check in on yourself from time to time. You matter.

What programs or opportunities would you like to see SUPRA add for trainees? 

I really enjoyed SURE and being able to see what cool research is going on at the university! I think it would be great for more opportunities to meet other trainees that are a part of SUPRA. 

What is your educational background?

I received my B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Delaware and a doctorate in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. At VCU, I worked on the medicinal chemistry of agents that target the serotonin system such as CNS stimulants and hallucinogens. After completing my doctoral studies, I moved to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases where I conducted postdoctoral training on drugs subject to abuse and potential treatment agents.

What is your current position?

Currently, I am Professor of Pharmaceutical Science in the College of Pharmacy and Director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Research and Innovation (CPRI).

Please describe your overall research program. Why did you choose this research area?

My research combines medicinal and natural products chemistry and is directed toward elucidation of the structure and function of neurotransmitter systems in the central nervous system in normal, drug-altered and pathological states and the development of medications for the treatment of drug abuse, pain, and other CNS disorders. It is characterized by the rigorous attention to the influence of chemical structure on biological activity.

My interest in drug abuse research comes from a family member’s struggle with substance abuse. I know first-hand the struggle families face and the emotional burden it causes. Two goals of my research program are to (1) find agents that can help treat substance abuse and (2) identify analgesics with a reduced potential for abuse.

What specific research project are you most excited about working on right now?

Currently, there are three projects in the laboratory. First, we continue to explore the structure-activity relationships of neoclerodane diterpenes at opioid receptors. Our goal is to identify compounds with pharmacotherapeutic potential in psychostimulant addiction and relapse, as well as neuropsychiatric disorders (including anxiety, depression and stress-related disorders such as PTSD). Second, we are examining the structure-activity relationships of functionally selective kappa opioid receptor ligands. We hope to identify functionally selective KOR ligands as novel medications for multiple sclerosis and other demyelinating diseases. Third, we are developing an improved medical countermeasure for exposure to fentanyl and other highly potent synthetic opioids. The major antidote available to reverse the effects of synthetic opioids is the opioid antagonist naloxone. However, recent reports suggest that higher doses or repeated dosing (due to recurrence of respiratory depression) may be required to reverse fully fentanyl-induced respiratory depression. While the reason that higher doses of naloxone may be required is not entirely clear, it indicates that more effective countermeasures are needed for synthetic opioid exposure.

Do you have any advice for trainees or early career researchers?

First, always use the right tool for the job. When solving scientific problems, it is best to use the technique most appropriate. One never wants to be a hammer in search of a nail. Second, always pay attention to detail. A careful scientist sweats the small stuff. Reproducibility is fundamental to moving any findings forward. Third, never lose your curiosity. Sometimes research takes you in unexpected directions and it can be a wonderful ride.

Please describe where you are in your training. Why did you choose to train in your selected area? 

I defended my master’s in the fall of 2020 in the Cognitive Neuroscience program, and I’m currently preparing for my qualifying exam. The neonatal rat organotypic hippocampal slice culture model used in our laboratory has broadened my research repertoire and allowed me to uniquely address research questions using immunohistochemistry, Western blot, and ELISA techniques with which I was unfamiliar prior to joining this lab. It is my goal to translate our in vitro model of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASDs) into rodent behavioral assessments.

FASDs can manifest in lifelong deficits in adaptive and executive functioning, cognitive performance, and attentional capacity. Many of the underlying biochemical problems contributing to FASDs remain ill-defined and subsequently have very few pharmacotherapeutic treatments. I chose to tackle FASDs to better elucidate the developmental underpinnings affecting lifelong cognitive and behavioral abnormalities in those with FASDs.

Please describe your overall research interests. 

I am interested in various avenues to investigate factors that may be involved in FASDs, especially the biochemical mechanisms that result in dysfunctional modifications of structural proteins which can induce lasting developmental abnormalities in the central nervous system. Ultimately, our goal is to establish associations between prenatal alcohol exposure and poor behavioral/cognitive outcomes; manipulations to the many predictors of this association may lead to more efficacious therapies for those impacted by prenatal alcohol exposure.

What specific research project are you most excited working on about right now? 

We have made some recent developments in our pilot work regarding structural protein modification by neonatal alcohol exposure that will be exciting moving forward. We plan to leverage the findings from our pilot in vitro work into functional/behavioral assessments to determine if our pilot findings are recapitulated in vivo. I am very excited that our lab is on the frontier of a potentially unique direction for FASDs treatment.

What advice do you have for other trainees? 

I think it is important to be both prepared and flexible when receiving and providing training. I would also suggest reaching out to researchers who study your interest through different experimental approaches. I have learned that it is imperative to have an arsenal of official and unofficial mentors who can guide you through sometimes-daunting theories, techniques, and professional decisions.

What programs or opportunities would you like to see SUPRA add for trainees? 

I would like to see some professional development seminars. While teaching and conducting research is necessary for a graduate degree, we can sometimes get so entrenched in our work that career development can fall by the wayside.  

What is your educational background?

I received my B.S. in Psychology, M.Ed. in Counselor Education, and Ph.D. in Biobehavioral Health, all from The Pennsylvania State University.

What is your current position?

Assistant Professor of Health, Behavior & Society

Please describe your overall research program. Why did you choose this research area?

My research program focuses broadly on the prevention of substance use among adolescent and emerging adult populations. More specifically, I am interested in using technology platforms to deliver prevention programs and applying dissemination and implementation science frameworks to adapt, improve, and extend the reach of evidenced-based programming for maximum public health impact.

What specific research project are you most excited about working on right now?

I am currently working on developing and testing an app for parents of high school students to help them communicate with their teens about alcohol use. The intervention is an adaptation from an evidence-based handbook for parents of college students, and fills a much needed gap. That is, we don’t have a lot of brief, evidence-based prevention tools that target high school students, which is a time period of tremendous change in both their attitudes and beliefs around alcohol and other substances as well as actual experimentation with substances. I love the creative process of working closely with technology partners to make content come to life via more modern and accessible formats.

Do you have any advice for trainees or early career researchers?

Seek out mentorship. As a trainee, this goes beyond whomever you may consider to be your formal/primary mentor. Build relationships with other people at your institution or more broadly within the field who not only can support you, but can provide you with honest and objective feedback. My mentors have played such an important role in my ongoing professional development. And of course, pay this forward when you have opportunity.

Please describe where you are in your training. Why did you choose to train in your selected area?

This semester, I successfully defended my master’s thesis and became the Experimental Psychology program Graduate Student Congress (GSC) representative. I have also learned new research techniques, such as immunohistochemistry and confocal scope imaging, and honed valuable mentorship skills through my SUPRA Super Student Grant project. Currently, I am working to promote the creation of networking opportunities for graduate, post-graduate, and academic professionals through my work in the GSC Professional Development and Networking committee and to improve my statistical research analyses through the completion of my graduate certificate in applied statistics. As I continue my training in pursuit of my PhD, I hope to keep learning new research methods and create new, lasting connections across various fields of study.

Considering the devastating impact of the opioid epidemic, it is important that substance use researchers continue to fight the epidemic at all levels. I chose to focus my research and training on the development of preclinical models of opioid use disorder (OUD), because our work at the preclinical level is vital to understanding the mechanisms of OUD and the development of future treatments. If we can gain a better understanding of the cellular mechanisms involved in OUD, and better model the human condition, we may be able to propose more viable treatment options.

Please describe your overall research interests.

My research is focused on developing novel and effective preclinical models of OUD, with a concentration on relapse, sex differences, and the intricate social factors involved in OUD. I am fascinated by the impact of stress and escalated intake on relapse in OUD and the overlapping brain areas associated with stress, escalation, and OUD. I am particularly interested in the regulation of corticotrophin releasing factor (CRF) in stress-associated brain areas following the escalation of opioid intake and how it may affect the propensity of relapse.

What specific research project are you most excited working on about right now?

I am most excited to continue working on our SUPRA Super Student Grant project. My undergraduate mentee, Emily Punzal, and I are working to determine if escalated fentanyl intake alters reinstatement and are learning new techniques to examine potential dysregulations in CRF neuronal activity.

What advice do you have for other trainees?

It is important to pursue your goals with passion and conviction. Seek out opportunities that foster personal growth, create vast support networks, take every failure as a learning opportunity, and keep trying. Always remember why you chose to pursue your goals and keep that in mind as you work to reach them.

What programs or opportunities would you like to see SUPRA add for trainees?

In the future, I would like to see SUPRA offer workshops where trainees can learn about various career choices, develop translational skills, and discover new research techniques.

1. What is your educational background? 

I received my PhD in Media & Information Studies from the College of Communication Arts & Sciences at Michigan State. My training was focused on health communication, health technologies, and telehealth, and I completed postdoctoral training in Health Promotion at the University of Georgia’s College of Public Health.

2. What is your current position? 

Assistant Professor in the Center for Health Equity Transformation and the Dept. of Behavioral Science.

3. Please describe your overall research program. Why did you choose this research area? 

My research program is focused on behavioral interventions that utilize modern communication technologies to encourage the adoption of healthy behaviors. I am specifically interested in interventions that address alcohol use among health disparity populations and as a means of facilitating cancer prevention and control. This is an exciting area to do research in, as new technologies are being developed every day that allow us to better track and encourage health behaviors. I enjoy thinking of and testing out ways to incorporate these technologies with evidence-based practices in a way that encourages expanded access to quality healthcare and treatment.

4. What specific research project are you most excited about working on right now? 

I’m currently leading a study that is testing a smartphone-based intervention for reducing alcohol use among people living with HIV/AIDS. It delivers an 8-week motivational interviewing intervention (using video and audio-only calls) and utilizes Bluetooth breathalyzers to collect twice-daily breath alcohol concentration data. The preliminary results are promising as far as impacts on alcohol use, and I’ve also received feedback from participants that they enjoy the convenience of a remotely-delivered intervention. I’m looking forward to continuing to refine this intervention approach and explore its applicability in other populations.

5. Do you have any advice for trainees or early career researchers? 

Having trusted mentors who you can go to for advice and brainstorm ideas with is so important—and if you aren’t getting that kind of mentorship, don’t be afraid to be proactive and seek it out!  I also think it’s important to learn as much as you can about the grant writing and reviewing process early on in your career. I’ve served as an Early Career Reviewer for NIH, and it was hugely helpful as I’ve written my own proposals.

1. Please describe where you are in your training. Why did you choose to train in your selected area? 

I am a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology and expect to defend my dissertation during the summer of 2021. In the fall, I will be starting clinical internship in psychology (the last stage of pre-doctoral training for psychologists seeking licensure) at the Charleston Consortium, which is housed within the Medical University of South Carolina and the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center.  

I decided to pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology because I liked the career flexibility and day-to-day variability this degree provides. At the end of my training, I would have the opportunity to find a position teaching and mentoring students, doing psychotherapy with patients, and/or conducting research.

2. Please describe your overall research interests. 

My research centers around understanding the co-occurrence of PTSD and health risk behaviors in trauma-exposed, vulnerable populations. My work aims (1) to inform the development of efficacious mental health and substance use treatments and (2) to evaluate the effectiveness of evidence-based interventions implemented in contexts where at-risk individuals can be reached.

3. What specific research project are you most excited working on about right now? 

I am most excited about my dissertation project, which will assess how well brief health behavior interventions work for trauma-exposed women involved in the justice system in rural Appalachian Kentucky. Research suggests that women from rural Appalachia not only experience high rates of trauma exposure but are also at risk for harmful health effects related to substance use and sexual risk behaviors (e.g., HIV and HCV). Periods of incarceration represent a unique intervention opportunity to address health behaviors among vulnerable populations in geographic locations where healthcare access is limited. We hope that this study's findings will help inform how to best address mental health and substance use difficulties among trauma-exposed justice-involved women. I am currently supported by funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA T32 DA035200; PI: Rush) to work on this project and am being mentored by Dr. Christal Badour and Dr. Michele Staton.

4. What advice do you have for other trainees? 

Almost everyone experiences imposter syndrome, or the tendency to feel like a fraud when surrounded by super smart, high-achieving peers and mentors. One of the most important lessons that I’ve learned is that you don’t have to know everything.  Graduate school is an opportunity to get familiar with a specific content area or methodology, and you can build on these foundational skills at later stages of training (during post-doc and as a faculty). 

5. What programs or opportunities would you like to see SUPRA add for trainees? 

Trainees could benefit from career development seminars focused on navigating the academic and non-academic job market, learning strategies for being an effective mentor/supervisor, and building a professional network.

Dr. Terry D. Hinds, Jr. 

College of MEDICINE, Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences

What is your educational background?

I received my PhD in Biomedical Sciences with a concentration in Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases from the University of Toledo College of Medicine (formerly the Medical College of Ohio).

What is your current position?

Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences

Please describe your overall research program. Why did you choose this research area?

My overall research program is on obesity and diabetes, focusing on fatty liver disease, adiposity, and drug development. My reasons for choosing this area are many. One reason is that my family is highly prone to type II diabetes. I have watched several members of my family slowly pass away from the deliberating disease, which eventually affected several parts of their body from kidney function, diabetic neuropathy, stroke, and diabetes-induced dementia. Therefore, I have been investigating the root causes of these diseases to find new targets for therapeutics in hopes of helping others live better lives.

What specific research project are you most excited about working on right now?

Our discovery that the long-thought toxic bile substance, bilirubin, has a hormonal function that at moderately increased levels reduces fat accumulation and insulin resistance and might prevent type II diabetes. The mechanisms explaining how bilirubin is controlling obesity and insulin resistance were unknown for nearly two decades. We established the concept that bilirubin is a metabolic hormone by binding to the nuclear receptor PPARalpha, which is how bilirubin drives gene expression to control adiposity. We have developed and patented bilirubin nanoparticles and other bilirubin-derived molecules as potential therapeutics for metabolic disease. We are currently working to understand the role of the proteins that regulate bilirubin's turnover, such as the enzyme that produces it, biliverdin reductase (BVR), and the glucuronyl enzyme that clears it from the body, UGT1A1. Studies have been focused on targeting these enzymes in dietary-induced fatty liver disease and insulin-resistant diabetes. Together, our studies provide new avenues for drug targeting with therapeutic interventions that are translational for patient studies. For these reasons, our project on bilirubin as a hormone has me most excited.

Do you have any advice for trainees or early career researchers?

Be tenacious and resilient, especially in making novel discoveries. There will likely be others that do not agree with paradigm-shifting findings. But, in time, the truth will reveal itself.

Shannon Eaton, PhD

College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Psychology

Please describe where you are in your training. Why did you choose to train in your selected area? 

I just defended my dissertation and have wrapped up my doctoral training. I am moving on to ASU as teaching faculty to help them teach core courses and develop curricula for their new neuroscience program. I always enjoyed learning and have been fascinated with how things worked. I wanted a career that would allow me to satisfy my desire for a life of learning. I always enjoyed learning about the brain and how it worked so I pursued a career in neuroscience.  

Please describe your overall research interests. 

My overall research interest has always been in sex differences, specifically sex differences in drugs of abuse. I use a quail model to explore sex differences in alcohol pharmacokinetics and reward-related behaviors. 

What specific research project are you most excited working on about right now? 

I am most excited about my dissertation project, which will assess how well brief health behavior interventions work for trauma-exposed women involved in the justice system in rural Appalachian Kentucky. Research suggests that women from rural Appalachia not only experience high rates of trauma exposure but are also at risk for harmful health effects related to substance use and sexual risk behaviors (e.g., HIV and HCV). Periods of incarceration represent a unique intervention opportunity to address health behaviors among vulnerable populations in geographic locations where healthcare access is limited. We hope that this study's findings will help inform how to best address mental health and substance use difficulties among trauma-exposed justice-involved women. I am currently supported by funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA T32 DA035200; PI: Rush) to work on this project and am being mentored by Dr. Christal Badour and Dr. Michele Staton.

What advice do you have for other trainees? 

Although my research here at UK has wrapped up, I am very excited to see what future research stems from my work. While as a SUPRA trainee I developed a blood ethanol concentration profile for quail, examined sex differences in alcohol dehydrogenase, and found a dose-dependent conditioned place preference. Even though I am moving on the lab will continue to establish the visual CPP model and examine the role of stress and CORT in ethanol-induced CPP. 

What programs or opportunities would you like to see SUPRA add for trainees? 

 Nothing really beats hands-on experience. The research experience is so different in a lab than in a class and getting the lab experience is imperative for anyone considering this as their career. The skills you learn can also be more broadly applied so learn as much as possible. I also think sometimes it can be intimidating to ask questions but asking questions is the basis of scientific research, so you should really take advantage of the access you have to other trainees or researchers to ask all types of questions. 

Gopalkumar Rakesh, MD

College of MEDICINE, Psychiatry

What is your educational background?

I am an early-career physician-scientist. My path to research was a nontraditional one with a serendipitous overlay. I went to medical school in India and my interest in psychiatry was triggered after seeing a patient with catatonia improve tremendously with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). After medical school, I was lucky to be one among a few admitted to the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), an apex body for psychiatry and neuroscience research in Bangalore. I completed my clinical training and then did a one-year research fellowship in neuromodulation and neuroimaging. At the institute, I had good mentors who exposed me to research and what it can do to optimize treatment modalities. And that kickstarted my research career. Subsequently, I transitioned to the US and completed my residency training with Duke Psychiatry where I continued my exposure to research, especially in neuromodulation. I was subsequently a postdoctoral fellow at Duke for a year before I moved to the University of Kentucky.

What is your current position?

I started as a Clinical Assistant Professor with the Department of Psychiatry in July 2019. Although my move was prompted by my spouse relocating here for residency training, I quickly found great mentors in Drs Craig Rush and Seth Himelhoch. In July of 2020, I transitioned to the Clinical Scholars Track which provides me protected time for research as well as significant mentoring and research support.

Please describe your overall research program. Why did you choose this research area?

Our research program aims to optimize neuromodulation for addiction disorders. My main mentors are Dr. Craig Rush, Professor in Behavioral Sciences, and Dr. Seth Himelhoch, Chair and Professor in Psychiatry. We use a technique of noninvasive brain stimulation called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), in combination with functional neuroimaging and eye-tracking to increase the precision of its application. Within addiction disorders, our current areas of focus are tobacco use disorder and opioid use disorder.

As a clinical provider during my first year of moving to Lexington, I realized the morbidity imposed on our patients by addiction disorders. Hence it was relatively easy to focus on the disease for clinical research. The pandemic and the ensuing uptick in mortality from opioid use disorder has only helped reaffirm our decision. Our patients come from the SMART clinic in Psychiatry (headed by Dr. Lindsey Jasinski in Psychiatry) and the Bluegrass Care Clinic (headed by Dr. Alice Thornton in Infectious Diseases). In the future, we hope to receive patients from the Beyond Birth Clinic as well.  

Our main collaborators at the University of Kentucky include Dr. Tom Adams in Psychology and Dr. Michael Wesley in Behavioral Sciences. During my training at Duke and after, I was mentored by Dr. Bruce Luber (who works with Dr. Sarah Lisanby at the NIMH) and continues to be an external consultant on our grants. We also collaborate with Dr. Rajendra Morey who continues to be a significant neuroimaging mentor to me.

What specific research project are you most excited about working on right now?

We have just started our study funded by the SUPRA initiative, which aims to modulate attentional bias and craving using TMS (NCT05049460).  This is a project we are all excited about. It will be a first to see how multiple sessions of theta burst stimulation (which is a specific TMS paradigm we use) change craving and attentional bias for cigarettes and opioids. With support from the MRI Scanning Center (MRISC), we will also compare how multiple sessions of theta burst change brain functional connectivity and white matter structure, compared to sham TMS.

Do you have any advice for trainees or early career researchers?

Persistence is key, as well as finding good mentors.

Nermin Ahmed

College of medicine, Sanders-Brown Center on aging

Please describe where you are in your training. Why did you choose to train in your selected area? 

Currently, I am working towards my doctoral degree in Dr. Loria’s Lab in the Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences Department in the College of Medicine at the University of Kentucky. I have been after the knowledge, eager to learn, investigate, and answer why and how things happen. Striving for the information made me an honors student through my journey in higher education to this point. I am a Clinical Dietitian specializing in pediatrics and critical care who practiced for a few years in a clinical setting, and I worked on clinical trials and human subject research but was still eager for more. I then wanted to add animal modeling to my skill set to carry out translational research and progress from the animal model to preclinical to clinically applicable research/practice. However, I was always interested and fascinated by how much everything we go through, even before we are born and early in our developmental years, could impact our lives and health outcomes both in the short and long term. I have experience in clinical trials; however, I wanted to add animal modeling and basic science research skills to my skill set to be able to bridge gaps that are present and difficult to study in humans. This is why I chose to work on bettering the understanding of perinatal opioid exposure during pregnancy on the neonatal long-term health outcomes.  

Please describe your overall research interests. 

Overall, I am interested in developmental programming and its effect on our health outcomes and susceptibility to cardiovascular and metabolic disease with a “from cell to clinic” approach. Learning techniques and skill sets that allow me to conduct animal research to help the research community understand more and be able to explore therapeutic targets and approaches in addition to translating research outcomes to clinical practice. I also am interested in research related to teaching and bridging the gap between academia and the industry.

What specific research project are you most excited working on about right now? 

I am most excited about the effect of maternal opioid use disorder on the development of cardiovascular and metabolic disease in the offspring, which is a project I am working on right now. Little is known about the long-term health outcomes of babies born to mothers with opioid use disorder. Therefore we developed an animal model to study the effect of in utero opioid exposure on the developmental programming of cardiovascular and metabolic function and the cardiovascular and metabolic disease in adulthood, and so far, the results are fascinating. An animal model will act as a tool providing us with a better understanding as to what is happening and a chance to test current clinical therapeutic approaches and their impact on cardiometabolic disease development, in addition to testing different windows of exposure in an attempt to tease out which duration and time of perinatal exposure contribute to which effects, helping in interventional options. Working closely with this population and getting a chance to work on this research now is a step further towards my career goals, and I am eager to find out what is happening there.

What advice do you have for other trainees? 

My advice to other trainees is to be proactive; look at being a trainee as a great achievement; much pressure comes with it but guess what! You are a trainee ( in a good way), so you are expected to make mistakes and learn, so use that to get the best out of your experience.  Always try to have a positive attitude and remember that the discomfort you may feel is only a sign of growth. Be teachable and seek opportunities to add to your skillset. It is easy to get sucked in with how fast-paced things can get, but have intentional reflection check-ins with yourself and reevaluate how you feel and what you want to learn and remember it is okay to change your mind as you learn and get exposed to new things, it is inevitable and is part of the process.

What programs or opportunities would you like to see SUPRA add for trainees? 

It would be nice to have a group or meetings with other trainees interested in substance use disorder that would act as a community allowing us to connect, provide support and discuss our work, personal and career development. Having a support system and a nurturing environment for trainees to engage with one another would be great.

Cassandra D. Gipson-Reichardt, Ph.D.

College of MEDICINE, family and community medicine

What is your educational background?

I received my B.S. from UC San Diego (Psychology major) in 2004, master's degree from UK (Psychology) in 2007, and Ph.D. from UK (Psychology) in 2010. My post-doctoral fellowship was with Dr. Peter Kalivas at the Medical University of South Carolina from 2010-2015.

What is your current position?

Associate Professor. Department is currently Family and Community Medicine but may be DPNS soon.

Please describe your overall research program. Why did you choose this research area?

My lab focuses on cellular mechanisms that impact aberrant glutamate plasticity in addiction. Specifically, we focus on how neuroimmune signaling, shifting ovarian hormones during the estrous cycle, cholinergic interneuronal control of glutamate synapses, and dopaminergic signaling in the reward pathway contribute to the use of drugs of abuse including nicotine, co-use of nicotine and alcohol, or co-use of oxycodone and cocaine. Recently, we have examined the impacts of contraceptive hormones on neurobehavioral underpinnings of nicotine and ethanol use. As my career progressed, I become interested in glutamate signaling and discovered that rapid, transient plasticity occurs in the nucleus accumbens during reinstatement to cues paired with drugs of abuse. As I transitioned to independence, I became increasingly focused on sex-specific mechanisms which drive glutamatergic neuroadaptations following the use of drugs of abuse and lead to continued drug consumption. My mechanistic work has resulted in translational collaborations with the goal of finding novel strategies to promote the cessation of drug use.

What specific research project are you most excited about working on right now?

My lab has several ongoing projects which are exciting, making it difficult to choose one to be most excited about! Currently, we are utilizing a novel transgenic rat line to control microglial activity within the nucleus accumbens during reinstatement of nicotine seeking, and determining their impacts on glutamate plasticity. This particular project is very exciting for two reasons: 1) controlling microglia with viral vectors has been impossible and thus an insurmountable hurdle in the field, and 2) uncovering the role of accumbens microglia in driving nicotine-related behavior and glutamate plasticity is novel. Thus far, we have preliminary validation that our transgenic approach is successful in infecting microglia!

Do you have any advice for trainees or early career researchers?

Persistence is probably the best word of advice I have for anyone at any career stage, but especially early career. This career path requires continued dedication to our craft in the face of disappointment, and persistence is the most important key to success.  Also, be excited about your science! We get to ask questions and we get to answer them. That kind of intellectual freedom is priceless, and we need to remember to enjoy what we do.

Sean Regnier

College of Medicine, behavioral science

Please describe where you are in your training. Why did you choose to train in your selected area? 

I am currently a first-year post-doctoral fellow with UK’s Lab of Human Behavioral Pharmacology. I received my PhD in Behavior Analysis at Western Michigan University and was a bit spread out during that time. I had two major areas of focus: 1) working as a clinician for individuals with developmental disabilities and mental illnesses who had behavioral problems that interfered with their ability to live independent lives; and 2) doing substance abuse research, primarily involving Contingency Management, a psychosocial intervention that uses incentives to promote healthy behavior. Just like many who are reading this spotlight, I saw what substance abuse and mental health problems can do to individuals and families around me and wanted to play my part in treatment. When applying for a post-doctoral fellowship, I knew I wanted to find an intersection between the two, which would require further specialization in behavioral pharmacology to learn more about the relationship between drugs and behavior. UK has one of the best behavioral pharmacology labs in the country, which made working with Drs. Bill Stoops, Josh Lile, and Craig Rush my top choice. In this lab, my priority continues to be treatment focused, and I hope to consider how substance use affects vulnerable populations, especially those with intellectual disabilities.

Please describe your overall research interests. 

I am primarily interested in the treatment of substance abuse for vulnerable populations, primarily individuals with mental illnesses and intellectual disabilities, including those living in poverty. Individuals with intellectual disabilities are at a higher risk of developing a substance use disorder and less likely to receive treatment. I am also interested in helping individuals who would benefit from treatment enter treatment and promoting long term treatment maintenance after an individual has been discharged from treatment.

What specific research project are you most excited working on about right now?

I am most excited about working on Dr. Stoop’s grant investigating the cardiovascular, immune, and psychosocial benefits of reducing cocaine use. There are several reasons why this project excites me. First, it is a very large-scale randomized control trial that requires cross-disciplinary collaboration. Additionally, cocaine is the most widely used stimulant in the United States and research like this study will help provide critical information about the health benefits of reduced use. This project also uses Contingency Management as a vehicle to obtain the main dependent measures in the study, which I find fascinating.

What advice do you have for other trainees? 

I would focus on building positive relationships with those around you. This includes other post-docs, graduate students, research assistants, PI’s, and other critical staff in your lab. Everyone plays an important role keeping the lab afloat. Having a cohesive team will help with your productivity, but also make the day-to-day work more enjoyable for everyone.

What programs or opportunities would you like to see SUPRA add for trainees?

While I am still learning about what exists already, any programs that involve skill building beyond research activity would be beneficial. These include leadership, multi-disciplinary collaboration, professionalism, living a healthy life outside of work, etc. These are skills that seem to distinguish leaders in our field.

Firaz Peer, Ph.D.

College of Communication and information, school of information

What is your educational background?

I have a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering, a master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction, and a PhD in Digital Media.

What is your current position?

I am an Assistant Professor in the School of Information Science within the College of Communication & Information.

Please describe your overall research program. Why did you choose this research area?

I position myself within the long lineage of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Science & Technology Studies (STS) scholars who have used theories of design and social justice to impact the making of information technologies. Within the field of HCI, my research interest is in studying the impact of information technologies on communities and vice versa. More specifically, I am interested in studying how algorithmic and data technologies are designed, built, and used, and the impact these actions have on marginalized communities, however, they might be defined.

It's hard to say if I chose this research area of this the research area chose me! Given my background in technology development, I was always interested in understanding how the technologies we build impact the people we’re building them for. My graduate education gave me the time and space to explore this research area further and find my own niche within it. I’m excited that I get to learn new things every day while working on my research.

What specific research project are you most excited about working on right now?

Currently, I am working on a research project in which my goal is to understand the information infrastructures through which refugees in Lexington and Louisville access information about substance use and recovery. Given that I have been trying to get this project off the ground during the pandemic, I am excited to have finally made some connections and received some internal funding to be able to carry out this research.

Do you have any advice for trainees or early career researchers?

I think the single most important thing that trainees and early career researchers could do is to meet other people and talk about your research. This could be done either through formal engagements like UK’s research dating events or informal coffee chats with colleagues and mentors. The pandemic has made this hard to do, but folks in academia are generally nice and are more than willing to take time out of their schedule to meet with and guide early career researchers.  

Erin Maher

COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, FAMILY AND COMMUNITY MEDICINE

Please describe where you are in your training. Why did you choose to train in your selected area? 

I am currently in my second year of a postdoctoral position in Cassandra Gipson’s lab in the Department of Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences. I received my Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Virginia in 2020 where my work focused on studying systems neuroscience in sensory systems using neuroanatomical techniques. After completing my Ph.D., I was interested in a postdoc position that had more clinical relevance and was very interested in the intersection of systems neuroscience and substance use disorders. UK not only has one of the best cores of researchers doing preclinical addiction research, but also fosters a collaborative environment for preclinical and clinical researchers to work together to untangle the neurobiology of addiction and improve outcomes for individuals suffering from substance use disorders.  

Please describe your overall research interests. 

I am primarily interested in the neural circuits involved in substance use disorder, with a focus on the reward pathway in the brain.  More specifically, I aim to determine how drugs, primarily nicotine, interact with neural circuitry that drives behavior that eventually leads to substance use disorders. Discovering and describing neural mechanisms of drug abuse will help to promote the development of novel strategies for the treatment of individuals suffering from addiction.

What specific research project are you most excited working on about right now? 

Right now, I am most excited about a line of research I am working on that focuses on the impact of ovarian hormones on nicotine consumption in females. Women have been shown to be more susceptible to tobacco use disorder, and one hypothesis is that this is due to the shifting ovarian hormone milieu across the menstrual cycle. My work has thus focused on how natural and synthetic hormones (such as those found in contraceptives) interact with the mesolimbic reward pathway to influence nicotine consumption. 

What advice do you have for other trainees? 

I think it is really important to try to build collaborative relationships early on in your training.  Building and maintaining collaborations are skills that take practice and I’ve seen how important collaborations are as an early career investigator. Connecting with other scientists, especially well-established ones, can be intimidating. But just remember that most people are very enthusiastic to share their science and experiences with you!

What programs or opportunities would you like to see SUPRA add for trainees? 

I think it would be great for SUPRA to provide some more professional development for trainees and to try to build more of a trainee community. Hopefully (pandemic provided) we could have some in-person seminars. I really enjoyed seeing some faces for the first time at SURE!