Biography:

Jonathan Aguirre is a third year graduate student in the MPaT program. Before MPaT, he received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey. Currently, as a graduate student, he is being advised by Dr. Jocelyn M. Richard where his research interest focuses on studying different aspects of alcohol use disorder and the brain regions responsible.  Specifically, studying the effects of deleting ventral tegmental area dopamine neuron GABA-B receptors on cue-induced reinstatement and aversion-resistant drinking. 

Biography:

Megan Brickner is a fifth year Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program in Neuroscience here at UMN. Before the GPN, she graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a graduate student, Megan is co-advised by Dr. Benjamin Saunders and Dr. Mark Thomas. Her research interests include investigating and modulating the neural circuitry underlying addiction as a way to disrupt drug seeking behaviors. 

Biography:

Klaiten is a Ph.D. candidate in the Jocelyn Richard Lab at UMN. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry with a minor in Chemistry from the University of Washington. He is interested in the neurobiological basis of psychiatric illnesses, such as addiction, anxiety, and depression.

Biography:

Hamed Ekhtiari received his MD, PhD from University of Tehran with honors with thesis on neuroimaging and cognitive deficits in people with opioid and methamphetamine use while he was developing the first neurocognitive lab with neuroimaging and neuromodulation at the Iranian National Center for Addiction Studies. After graduating as an MD-PhD in 2015, he completed 2 years of postdoc with Martin Paulus at Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa, OK and then appointed as a research assistant professor in 2018. He started his psychiatry residency in clinician-scientist track in 2021 while he kept his lab active with multiple postdocs and clinical trials. Dr. Ekhtiari’s lab is focused to reshape the future of treatments for substance use disorders with individualized brain imaging, brain stimulation and cognitive technologies. 

Biography:

Lauren M. Slosky, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and a member of the Medical Discovery Team on Addiction. She received her Ph.D. in 2015 from the Department of Pharmacology at The University of Arizona where she trained under Dr. Todd Vanderah, and completed her post-doc in the Department of Cell Biology at Duke University under Dr. Marc Caron. Her work is focused on identifying novel strategies for the treatment of stimulant and opioid addictions, with a focus on neuropeptide G protein-coupled receptors and the development of allosteric and functionally selective small molecules. 

Biography:

Ghazaleh’s research interests focus on the development of optimized brain stimulation protocols informed by brain mapping tools for individuals with substance use disorders. Her goal is to understand how transcranial electrical/magnetic stimulation impacts neural and behavioral outcomes in addiction medicine. By utilizing MR neuroimaging, signal processing, and machine learning techniques, she explores the relationship between stimulation-induced electric fields and changes in brain functions and behaviors. Her research is dedicated to creating personalized brain stimulation protocols and refining stimulation parameters.

Biography:

Sade Spencer, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology. She received her PhD from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas, Texas) where she trained with Dr. Colleen McClung and a postdoc at the Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston, SC) in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Kalivas. Research in the Spencer lab is focused on studying the trajectory of neuroplasticity, neurochemistry and behavior associated with drug addiction as a relapsing brain disorder.

Biography:

Dr. Brenden Tervo-Clemmens earned his PhD (Clinical Psychology) from the University of Pittsburgh, with secondary training from Carnegie Mellon University (Cognitive Neuroscience), focusing on the intersection of developmental cognitive neuroscience, mental health research, and computational methods. He trained at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School for my predoctoral clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship, with an emphasis on research and treatment of adolescents with substance use disorders.

Research in his lab aims to understand normative brain development and the emergence of mental health and substance use disorders during adolescence, integrating techniques from developmental cognitive neuroscience, computational methods, and psychopathology research. His lab is also engaged in methodological work aiming to evaluate and improve the reproducibility and ultimately, clinical and policy utility, of large-scale fMRI and behavioral assessment research in neurodevelopmental studies.

Biography:

Mark Thomas, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota and the Director of the Medical Discovery Team on Addiction, a new research program funded by the state legislature to fuel cross-disciplinary collaborations and discover new treatment options. He is also the Director for the Center for Neural Circuits in Addiction. His research examines how addictive drugs alter the brain and how these changes can lead to compulsive drug use. His lab is now focusing on ways to disrupt addiction relapse. He conducts optogenetics techniques in the field of addiction as a neuromodulation researcher for MnDRIVE Brain Conditions.