News

We are delighted to announce that Mary Torregrossa, PhD, has received conferral of tenure at the rank of associate professor by the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Torregrossa is a leading scholar in the field of addiction neuroscience. Her research focuses on understanding how motivational, cognitive, and learning and memory systems are altered in substance use disorders. Her goal is to identify interventions that target these underlying neurobiological substrates to help reduce substance use and relapse for individuals who have achieved abstinence. Dr. Torregrossa is particularly interested in how high levels of stress and stress hormones during critical prefrontal cortical developmental windows, including adolescence, increase long-term risk for psychiatric disorders such as alcoholism, drug addiction, and anxiety disorders. In addition, she focuses on sex differences in the response to stress and cue-related learning and how that influences motivation to use alcohol and drugs. Her innovative research has yielded groundbreaking findings, including discovering the neural mechanisms underlying the formation and extinction of a cocaine-associated memory in the lateral amygdala and a novel optogenetic method for preventing relapse.

Dr. Torregrossa is principal investigator (PI) of a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) R01 investigating the mechanisms underlying sex differences in stress-induced alcohol seeking. In addition, she is MPI on an NIAAA R01 investigating the interplay between chronic alcohol use and sleep, and on an NIAAA R21 focused on identifying the mechanistic role of subpopulations of midbrain glutamatergic neurons in alcohol reinforcement and motivation. She co-leads a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) R21 to develop models of co-use of nicotine and THC, to investigate if their combination produces differential self-administration, neural responses, and relapse-like behaviors that could indicate the need for different treatment approaches. Her work on the co-use of nicotine and THC is extended by her MPI role on a NIDA R01 investigating the neural mechanisms by which nicotine and THC interact to produce changes in dopamine neuron function and enhanced THC reinforcement. 

Dr. Torregrossa is highly involved with the Department’s NIDA-funded Center for Adolescent Reward, Rhythms and Sleep (CARRS), co-leading two studies and serving as co-investigator (co-I) on one. Her prior funding includes multiple federally funded grants, including a NIDA F32 to support her postgraduate work, a NIDA K01 career development award, NIAAA and NIDA R21 grants, and a NIDA R01 grant.

Dr. Torregrossa has published her research in top journals in her field, edited a book (Neural Mechanisms of Addiction), and presented her work nationally and internationally. She is an elected member of the ACNP, a regular member of the College on Problems in Drug Dependence, and has received a NIDA-NIAAA Early Career Investigator Showcase Award and an Interviewee NIDA Director’s Prize. Dr. Torregrossa has served as chair and is a standing member of the National Institutes of Health Biobehavioral Regulation, Learning and Ethology NIH study section.

An outstanding teacher and mentor, Dr. Torregrossa co-directs the Supportive, Multidisciplinary Addiction Research Training (SMART) T32 program, funded by NIDA, which provides training in substance use disorder research for postdoctoral fellows engaged in translational research spanning basic research programs to clinical trials. She has taught undergraduate, graduate, and medical students, and has provided research mentorship to more than 50 trainees from the Departments of Psychiatry, Bioengineering, Neuroscience, and the Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh (CNUP), on topics related to the science of addiction.

“Dr. Torregrossa is a leading researcher and scholar in addiction neuroscience, and has contributed groundbreaking translational contributions that have advanced prediction and treatment of substance use disorders,” said David Lewis, MD (Chair, Department of Psychiatry). “She has made invaluable contributions to the training of students at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Torregrossa is highly collaborative, and has an outstanding record of service to the scientific community here at Pitt, as well as nationally and internationally.”

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Torregrossa!