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NARSAD Young Investigator Awards

The Department of Psychiatry is pleased to announce that the following individuals have been selected by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation to receive NARSAD Young Investigator Awards:

Ryan Logan, PhD	Identifying Neurotherapeutic Epigenetic Targets for the Treatment of Bipolar Disorder Dr. Ryan Logan earned his PhD in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Maine. A Postdoctoral Scholar in the McClung Laboratory in the Translational Neuroscience Program, Dr. Logan?s research focuses on the involvement of circadian mechanisms in mood disorders and drug addiction.
Nadine Melhem, PhD	Biomarkers in the HPA Axis for Depression and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Dr. Nadine Melhem, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, has focused her research on the study of the genetics of psychiatric and brain phenotypes, and the etiology and biological pathways involved in stress response and suicidal behavior.  She has extensively studied trauma and berearvement in cfhildren, and conducted the first longitudinal study looking at the course of grief in children and adolescents.
Angela Ozburn, PhD	Mechanisms Mediating Circadian Gene Effects on Anxiety-Related Behaviors: Focus on NPAS2 and GABAA Dr. Angela Ozburn obtained her doctorate degree in Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Translational Neuroscience Program where she has been actively engaged in research to examine the role of circadian genes in drug addiction using a variety of molecular and behavior techniques in the laboratory of Dr. Colleen McClung.
Dorothy Sit, MD	Neural and Visual Responses to Light in Bipolar Disorder: A Novel Putative Biomarker Dr. Dorothy Sit, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, is a board-certified psychiatrist.  Her research focus is on novel treatment development for patients with Bipolar Disorder.  In her K23 Career Development Award she examines the efficacy of light therapy for the treatment of bipolar depression and circadian biomarkers which could explain symptom expression in bipolar disorder.  Her research also extends to study of the phenomenology, psychopharmacology and metabolism of women with bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder across the life cycle (pregnancy, postpartum, menstrual cycles).