The Department of Psychiatry Welcomes Research Faculty Members Feng Li, MD, PhD, and Francisco López Caballero, PhD
Pitt Psychiatry extends a warm welcome to two new faculty members:
Feng Li, MD, PhD (Research Assistant Professor of Psychiatry)
Dr. Li received his MD in clinical medicine from Shandong First Medical University (2001) and his PhD in endocrinology and metabolism from Shanghai Jiao-Tong University School of Medicine in China (2012). He completed residency training at Shanghai Xin-Hua Hospital in the Shanghai Institute of Pediatric Medicine, and conducted postdoctoral research training in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Medicine’s Division of Endocrinology.
Dr. Li conducts research in the laboratory of Zachary Freyberg, MD, PhD (Associate Professor of Psychiatry). An expert in the biology of the pancreatic beta cell, Dr. Li investigates the impact of dopamine on beta cell function. This work includes the mechanisms of local pancreatic dopamine synthesis and signaling within pancreatic islets, and the roles this signaling plays in the regulation of hormone secretion. Dr. Li’s goal is to improve our understanding of the relevance of dopamine outside of the brain for metabolic regulation under healthy conditions, as well as in the contexts of diabetes and antipsychotic drug-induced metabolic dysfunction.
Francisco López Caballero, PhD (Research Instructor in Psychiatry)
Dr. López Caballero received his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Barcelona (Spain) in 2019. He then came to the University of Pittsburgh for postdoctoral research training in clinical neurophysiology with Dean Salisbury, PhD (Professor of Psychiatry).
As a postdoctoral associate, Dr. López Caballero studied basic auditory neurophysiology from the thalamus through the cortex using multimodal imaging with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and electroencephalography (EEG). Subsequently, he began working on a project examining auditory change detection and associated deficits in first episode psychosis, including computational modeling of synaptic currents reflected in scalp-EEG and source-resolved MEG. For his independent program of research in Dr. Salisbury’s lab, Dr. López Caballero examines brainstem, thalamic, and cortical activity related to speech sounds and how impairments in processing speech sounds impacts real-world functioning in early psychosis.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Li and Dr. López Caballero!