SCOR Principal Investigator and Director

Rajita Sinha, Ph.D.
Dr. Rajita Sinha an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, is the Principal Investigator and Director of this SCOR. She is also Director of the Research Program on Stress Addiction, and Psychopathology in the Department of Psychiatry. Her expertise is in clinical research on stress and addictive disorders, chronic effects of drugs of abuse on stress responses and cognitive abilities, and treatment development in substance use disorders. She has specific interest in sex differences in the above areas and in the development of gender-specific treatments in addictive disorders.

SCOR Co-Directors

Carolyn Mazure, Ph.D.
Dr. Carolyn M. Mazure is a Professor of Psychiatry and the Associate Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs at the Yale University School of Medicine, and Director of Women's Health Research at Yale. She is also the scientific co-director of the SCOR and Principal Investigator for the NIDA/ORWH-funded Yale Interdisciplinary Women's Health Research Scholar Program on Women and Drug Abuse (BIRCWH Award). Her research expertise is in affective disorders and prediction of affective illness onset and treatment response. She is also focused on understanding sex differences in health and disease, and her current research uses multivariate models to examine stress as a precipitant for psychiatric disorders and substance abuse in women and men.

Bruce Rounsaville, M.D.
Dr. Bruce Rounsaville is a Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and the scientific co-director of this SCOR. He is a leading expert in clinical research on substance use disorders and affective disorders. His principal research areas are psychotherapy and psychosocial interventions with substance abusers, the interaction of behavioral treatments and pharmacotherapy of drug abusers and psychiatric epidemiology. He is also co-chair of the SCOR Scientific Advisory Board.

SCOR Investigators

George Anderson, Ph.D.
Dr. Anderson is a Research Scientist at the Yale Child Studies Center and the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is an expert on neurobiological studies on various neuropsychiatric disorders, ranging from studies on autism, mood disorders, schizophrenia and substance use disorders.

Idil Cavus, Ph.D.
Dr. Cavus is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine and is a Yale BIRCWH scholar. She is a SCOR investigator who is conducting a collaborative research project utilizing SCOR Core resources to examine the effects of hormonal fluctuation on brain neurochemistry. She has established a multidisciplinary linkage with the Yale Neurosurgery and Epilepsy Mircodialysis Program and is studying in vivo brain neurochemistry and physiology in awake conscious subjects. As part of this linkage she is also examining the effects of menstrual cycle on changes in brain neurochemistry and neurophysiology during cognitive tasks in women.

R. Todd Constable, Ph.D.
Dr. Constable is an Associate Professor of Diagnostic Radiology, Biomedical Engineering, and Neurosurgery and Director of MRI Research, co-Director of the Yale Magnetic Resonance Research Center. His areas of expertise include: The development of MR methods for quantitative imaging including functional brain imaging; The application of functional brain imaging to memory and language mapping in epilepsy patients who are candidates for neurosurgical intervention; Understanding the relationship between physiological changes measured in fMRI and actual underlying neuronal activity and how this coupling might be altered in the presence of medications.

Ned L Cooney, Ph.D.
Dr. Cooney is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine. His areas of expertise include alcohol-tobacco interactions, cue reactivity assessment, and ecological momentary assessment and development of smoking cessation treatments.

Vladimir Coric, M.D.
Dr. Coric is the Unit Chief of the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit (CNRU) of the Connecticut Mental Health Center and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University. He has expertise in Obsessive Compulsive Disorders, Forensic Psychiatry and Substance Use Disorders. He manages the day-to-day operations of the inpatient unit where SCOR studies are conducted. He is responsible for clinical care and management of study patients also works closely with the SCOR study coordinator and recruiters to coordinate inpatient admissions and to ensure adequate patient flow into our research studies.

Cheryl Doebrick, Ph.D.
Dr. Doebrick is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and the Clinical Director of the Substance Abuse Treatment Unit (SATU). She has experience in behavioral and psychosocial treatments of substance use disorders and clinical care models of addiction. SATU is one of the large outpatient clinical programs in the greater New Haven area and is a major recruitment base for SCOR studies. It provides outpatient treatment services to a large number of addicted individuals participating in SCOR-related projects.

Helen Fox, Ph.D.
Dr. Helen Fox is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. She earned her doctorate in Experimental Psychology from the University of London. Her research interests are in neurocognitive effects of chronic drugs of abuse. She is examining sex differences in the interactions between stress and cognition.

Scott M. Hyman, Ph.D.
Dr. Scott Hyman is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. He earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from Nova Southeastern University. Post-graduate clinical training was received at the Boston Consortium in Clinical Psychology. Dr. Hyman is interested in the study of child maltreatment, substance abuse, social support, and the effects of self-disclosure on the therapeutic relationship. He is also a recipient of the NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award and the NIDA Women and Gender Junior Investigator Travel Award.

Harvey Kliman, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Kliman is on the faculty in the Yale Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and is also the Director of the Reproductive and Placental Research Unit with a special interest in endometrial, placental and perinatal pathology. He has over twenty years of anatomic pathology training with particular emphasis in immunohistochemistry. He is an expert in implantation, placentation and the development of the Endometrial Function Test (EFT).

Thomas Kosten, M.D.
Dr. Thomas R. Kosten is a Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine at Yale University Medical School and Deputy Chief of Psychiatry at VA Connecticut. His expertise is in research on clinical neurobiology, medications development and treatment of substance use disorders. His medication contributions include developing a cocaine vaccine, immunotherapy for hallucinogens, buprenorphine for opioid dependence, disulfiram for cocaine dependence, vasodilators for cocaine induced cerebral perfusion defects, and using combined medications with contingency management for opioid and cocaine dependence.

Mary Jeanne Kreek, M.D.
Dr. Kreek is a Professor and Head of the Laboratory on the Biology of Addictive Diseases at Rockefeller University. She is a leading international expert in the area of neurobiology of addictive disorders, specifically in brain stress circuits and HPA regulatory systems in addiction.

Jaakko Lappalainen, MD, PhD.
Dr. Lappalainen is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine. Areas of research include: Molecular genetic risk factors of alcoholism and drug dependence, sex-specific genetic risk factors of addiction, genetic background of stress sensitivity and cognition, population genetics.

Chiang-shan Ray Li, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Chiang-shan Ray Li is an Associate Research Scientist and a BIRCWH scholar in the Yale Department of Psychiatry. He is particularly interested in understanding the neural basis of gender-specific personality traits and their effects on cognitive and affective processing. His current research includes neuroimaging studies on stress-induced brain activation in cocaine users, the effect of sociopathy and alexithymia on stress-induced brain activation and a human psychophysical study exploring response inhibition in patients of substance use disorders.

Wendy J Lynch, Ph.D.
Dr. Wendy J. Lynch is an Associate Research Scientist in the Yale Department of Psychiatry and is also a BIRCWH scholar. Through the use of animal models, her research objectives are to characterize sex differences in drug-reinforced responding across the addiction process and to determine the behavioral, hormonal, and molecular mechanisms that may underlie sex differences.

Paul Maciejewski, Ph.D.
Dr. Maciejewski is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University and Director of the Statistical Modeling Core of the Donaghue Women's Health Investigator Program at Yale. He is also the SCOR Biostatistician. He has expertise in the application of a variety of multi-variable statistical modeling techniques, including linear regression, repeated measures analysis of variance, hierarchical linear modeling, logistic regression, survival analysis, path analysis, and structural equation modeling.

Robert Malison, M.D.
Dr. Malison is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine and is Director of the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit (CNRU) at the Connecticut Mental Health Center. He has expertise in clinical neurobiology particularly in the interaction between brain stress circuits, serotonin and dopaminergic systems and other neurotransmitter systems. He is involved in brain imaging studies as well as genetic studies to investigate individual differences in brain responses to various drugs.

Peter Morgan, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Peter Morgan is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and Associate Chief of the Cocaine Research Clinic on the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit. His areas of research include: sleep and cognition in cocaine dependence; sex differences in cocaine dependence; objective measurement of alcohol cue-craving and sex differences in hereditary effects of alcoholism.

Marina Picciotto, Ph.D.
Dr. Marina Picciotto, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Neurobiology and Pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Picciotto directs an extensive research program on the molecular basis of behavior, with particular emphasis on signaling systems related to drug abuse. In 2000, she also received the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientist and Engineers. Her principal research areas are the use of genetically manipulated mouse models to study nicotine addiction, nicotinic receptors and psychiatric illness, sex differences in behaviors related to drug abuse and neuropeptides implicated in addiction and modulation of reinforcement.

Ann Rasmusson, M.D.
Dr. Rasmusson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine and is a Yale BIRCWH scholar. She has clinical expertise in chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and has conducted animal and clinical studies on the neurobiology associated with PTSD, early life stress and interactions with chronic drug abuse, in particular nicotine dependence and cocaine use disorders.

Sally Shaywitz, M.D.
Dr. Shaywitz is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Yale University School of Medicine and is an expert in functional neuroimaging using fMRI. She has been examining gender differences in fMRI BOLD response to various cognitive and learning paradigms in children and adults.

Pawel Skudlarski, Ph.D.
Dr. Skudlarski is a Research Scientist in the Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Magnetic Resonance Research Center (MRRC) at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is a Computer Scientist with a background in theoretical physics and has expertise in statistical modeling of functional brain imaging data. He has developed sophisticated in-house functional neuroimaging softwre and is continuously developing new parametric analytic tools for application in functional neuroimaging studies.

Makram Talih, Ph.D.
Dr. Talih is an Assistant Professor of Statistics at Hunter College, City University of New York and provides statistics consultation to the SCOR and the Research Program on Stress Addiction and Psychopathology. He has also been a visiting professor at the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. He is an expert in random mixed effects model techniques as well as in the application of a variety of multi-variable statistical modeling techniques, such as linear regression, repeated measures analysis of variance, hierarchical linear modeling, logistic regression and survival analysis.

Jane Taylor, Ph.D.
Dr. Jane Taylor is an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Division of Molecular Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Taylor's laboratory uses behavioral, pharmacological and molecular methods to understand the pathophysiology of addiction, depression and other psychiatric disorders that are associated with alterations in motivation and cognition. A primary focus is the role of nicotine, alcohol and cocaine on DA/cAMP/PKA/CREB-regulated signaling pathways in cortico-limbic-striatal circuits and their effects on learning and memory.

Bruce Wexler, M.D.
Dr. Wexler is the Psychiatry Department Coordinator for fMRI studies and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Yale. Dr. Wexler has expertise in the study of emotional and cognitive processing in psychiatric disorders and addiction using fMRI to explore their neural correlates.