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-Director

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.

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 internationally known for his expertise in neurobiological studies on patients with various psychiatric disorders. He is currently a SCOR collaborator and provides his expertise in the collection and analysis of neurochemical measures such as HPA axis and plasma catecholamines.

Keri Bergquist, Psy.D.
Dr. Bergquist is a clinical psychologist by training and is completing her post-doctoral experience with Dr. Sinha in clinical and laboratory studies. She has expertise in psychiatric diagnoses and clinical assessment and treatment of substance use disorders. She has experience in conducting structured clinical interviews and assessments such as the SCID, the Early Trauma Inventory (ETI) and the Stressful Events Interview (SEPRATE) and the ASI with substance abusing patients. She also has training in evidence based behavioral treatments for substance use disorders (Motivational Enhancement Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy). She will work closely with research staff on the adolescent and adult projects to interview subjects and develop imagery scripts for laboratory and fMRI sessions. Dr. Bergquist is an expert in the development of stress imagery script development for laboratory studies. She will also oversee and manage all recruitment and clinical research issues pertaining to subjects entering SCOR human studies and serve as the SCOR Clinical Research Director for Adult Projects.

Zubin Bhagwagar, M.D.
Dr. Bhagwagar is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine and is Unit Chief of the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit (CNRU), an inpatient clinical research facility at the Connecticut Mental Health Center. He has expertise in the interaction between brain stress circuits in mood disorders and more recently he is examining mechanisms of co-morbidity between mood and substance use disorders

Idil Cavus, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Cavus is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and is a Yale BIRWCH Scholar. She will be involved in developing affliaited research project utilizing SCOR Core resources. She has established a interidisciplinary linkage with the Yale Neurosurgery and Epilepsy Microdialysis Program and has funding to examine in vivio brain neurochemistryand physiology in awake conscious subjects.

Stephanie Collins, Ph.D.
Dr. Collins is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University and the New York Psychiatric Institute. She has established a mentoring relationship with SCOR investigators including Dr. Sinha to develop expertise in exploring sex differences in her research on impulsivity in stimulant dependence. She applied and was successful in obtaining funding for a K01 application and this application is an affiliated project in the SCOR.

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.

Joel Gelernter, M.D.
Dr. Gelernter is a Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Psychiatric Genetics Program at Yale University. He is a leading expert in the genetics of substance use disorders and in gene-environment interactions that increase risk of SUDs. He also has an R01 on the genetics of cocaine dependence which has been included as a SCOR affiliated project. SCOR Core resources will be used to recruit cocaine dependent women for his R01 project so that he has adequate numbers of women to examine sex differences in the proposed hypotheses in his project. He will also serve as an SCOR Executive Committee member.

Rita Goldstein, Ph.D.
Dr. Rita Goldstein is a Research Scientist at the Brookhaven National Laboratories and she has established a collaboration with SCOR studies to share in recruitment of women and in assessment of sex differences in fMRI markers of reward related regions that are predictive of cocaine relapse outcomes. She has a K23 and an R21 on this area and these projects are affiliated with the SCOR.

Joan Kaufman, Ph.D.
Dr. Kaufman is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and the Child Studies Center at Yale University and is a leading expert in structured diagnostic assessments of psychiatric disorders in children. She is also an expert in identifying genetic and environmental vulnerability factors and their interactions in the development of psychiatric and substance use disorders (SUD).

Harvey Kliman, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Kliman is a Research Scientist and 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 has devoted over 16 years of scientific research to issues related to implantation, placentation, and the development of the Endometrial Function Test (EFT). He will play a key role in training SCOR investigators and research staff on changes that occur in the cycle phase, reproductive status, and menopausal status.

Wendy J Lynch, Ph.D.
Dr. Lynch is an expert in sex difference in drug self-administration and has been a previous BIRCWH scholar, co-investigator of the SCOR-I basic science project. Although Dr. Lynch has moved to University of Virginia in Charlottelville, she continues to collaborate on scientific papers and research projects with Dr. Picciotto, Taylor and Nairn. She is PI of an R03 from NIDA which was funded while she was at Yale and this project is an affiliated project in the proposed SCOR.

Paul Maciejewski, Ph.D.
Dr. Maciejewski is the Director of the Statistical Modeling Core of the Donaghue Women’s Health Investigator Program at Yale. He is a biostatistician who 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 survival analysis, path analysis, and structural equation modeling. He has collaborated with Dr.Mazure and others in examining sex differences in the effects of recent stressful life events on the onset of depressive illness and on smoking relapse and continuation.

Robert Malison, M.D.
Dr. Malison is an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine and is Co-Director of the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit (CNRU) at the Connecticut Mental Health Center. He has expertise in the interaction between brain stress circuits, serotonin and dopamingergic systems and other neurotransmitter systems. In his role as Co-Director of the CNRU, he will ensure that adequate resources are allocated to SCOR component and affiliated projects so that patient flow and laboratory testing goals are met. He also functions as a senior member of the SCOR team and is PI of a SCOR affiliated R01 project.

Sherry McKee, Ph.D.
Dr. McKee is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University and a Clinical Psychologist who has an interrst in sex differences in stress effects in nicotine dependence. Dr. McKee has an R21 project that is examining stress/negative affect and smoking behavior that utilizes SCOR Core resources in the development and use of the stress imagery procedures developed by SCOR faculty. Thus, her R21 is an affiliated project in the SCOR.

Peter Morgan, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Peter Morgan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and is Co-PI of an R01 project affiliated with the SCOR that will examine sleep and Cognition related changes during cocaine abstinence. He received SCOR support to conduct a pilot study examining sex differences in sleep disturbances associated with chronic cocaine abuse and found that cocaine dependent (CD) women had less sleep-related problems compared to cocaine dependent men. He is now conducting a follow-up study to assess progesterone’s role in improved sleep patterns in CD women.

Bruce Rounsaville, Ph.D.
Dr. Rounsaville is a Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and will participate in the executive committee meetings of the Center. He is Program Director of the Yale BIRCWH Training Program and has been a senior Director of the current SCOR. In this SCOR renewal application he will remain a member of the SCOR Executive Committee and will provide advice and guidance to SCOR projects, provide ongoing monitoring of progress and will give input on direction of research for SCOR studies. He will also collaborate with Dr. Sinha and Mazure in the translation of basic research conducted through Center studies to clinical research in order to promote a mutually supportive interaction of basic and clinical research.

Tara Chaplin, Ph.D.
Dr. Chaplin is a licensed clinical child psychologist who has recently joined the SCOR team. She comes from the Laboratories of Dr. Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania where she has been examining models of risk for depression in girls and developing gender-specific depression prevention programs for girls. Dr. Chaplin will serve as the SCOR Clinical Research Director for Child Projects and will coordinate and provide her expertise in the psychiatric diagnostic interviews for children recruited in Center studies. She will work closely with Dr. Kaufman in conducting psychiatric assessments. She will also oversee all aspects of laboratory testing and experimentation for Projects 2 and 3 and coordinate the across projects data management and analysis of these studies. Her interests are in developing sex-specific pathways for the development of mood and SUDs and she will bring this experience to the analysis and interpretation of the data collected from these SCOR projects.

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Project 1

Jane Taylor, Ph.D.
Dr Talyor is an expert in behavioral neuroscience using animal models to study the biological basis of addiction. Her work has focused on the behavioral and molecular consequences of drugs of abuse with an emphasis on persistent neuroadaptaitons associated with cognition and motivation. She will serve as the Principal Investigator of this project and will oversee all behavioral experiments, perform data analysis, coordinate communication between the investigators and write publications and other materials related to this work. Dr. Taylor's established expertise in animal behavioral measurement, intra-cerebral infusion and surgical techniques, chronic drug treatments and statistical analysis gives her a critical role in this proposed research. This proposal will constitute a link between her work on molecular mechanisms of cocaine exposures and stress with a role for sex differences in phases of the addiction process.

Peter Olausson, Ph.D.
Dr Olausson has an extensive background in studying pharmacology, behavioral neuroscience as well as signal transduction using molecular and genetic techniques in wild type and genetically manipulated rats/mice. He will oversee biochemical experiments and behavioral experiments along with Dr. Taylor. He also has experience with in vivo microdialyses (with Dr. Jentsch) and proteomics (with Dr. Nairn). Recently, he has gained extensive experience with samples from rat and monkey for proteomic analyses and basic comparisons for sex differences have been initiated.

Angus Nairn, Ph.D.
Dr Nairn has extensive experience in the study of the enzymology, protein chemistry, and molecular biology of signal transduction, particularly with respect to the role of protein phosphorylation in the nervous system. Dr. Nairn has identified, purified and characterized a variety of neuronal phosphoproteins that are important in mediating the actions of neurotransmitters and he will be involved in several aspects of the post-mortem biochemical studies and analyses. Dr. Nairn has also carried out detailed studies of the function of many protein kinases and protein phosphatases, that play critical roles in neuronal function. Recent studies by Dr. Nairn and his colleagues have focused on identifying long-term adaptive changes in signal transduction processes that are involved in mediating the actions of antipsychotic drugs as well as several drugs of abuse. As Co-Principal Investigator of the NIDA/Yale Neuroproteomics Center, Dr. Nairn works together with the Co-PI, Dr. Kenneth Williams to facilitate communication and collaboration between center users, to interact with center users to identify approaches and technologies that are appropriate for specific neurobiological questions, and to prioritize specific projects. In the second year of the Project we will begin to utilize tissue from the biochemical studies for proteomic analyses on tissues obtained from the behavioral studies. Dr Taylor is also a core Investigator in the NIDA/Yale Neuroproteomics Center.

Jennifer Quinn, PhD.
Dr Quinn has extensive experience in behavioral neuroscience, animal models of addiction, learning and memory studies with some background in biochemistry. Recently she has worked with Dr. Jentsch and microdialyses and with Dr. Olausson on biochemical analyses including RIA techniques. She has become highly experienced with knock out and transgenic mouse studies and has taken the lead role in the mouse studies that are outlined in the Progress Report/Preliminary data section. She has also conducted the behavioral sensitization and self-administration studies with the CRF. She will perform the behavioral experiments in rodents and will assist with all biochemical experiments.

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Project 2

Linda Mayes, Ph.D.
Dr. Mayes is a Professor at the Child Study Center of the Yale University School of Medicine and is the PI for this project. Dr. Mayes has extensive experience in various methodologies of psychological and child development research and currently holds a K05 award for studies of dense array electroencephalography in prenatally drug-exposed adolescents. She has been PI for 14 years on the longitudinal follow-up study of prenatally cocaine-exposed adolescents that constitutes the core cohort resource for this project and also PI on another longitudinal cohort for younger children investigating the impact of environmental adversity on early neurocognitive development. The 14 year longitudinal project has been focused primarily on the development of emotional regulatory capacities in cocaine-exposed children and adolescents. Dr. Mayes is responsible for coordinating all the scientific aspects of this project. With Dr. Nicholls (see below), she will be involved in supervising laboratory and assessment procedures and will work closely with the core research associate to ensure adequate patient flow into the study.

Sheryl Ryan, M.D.
Dr. Ryan is a pediatrician specializing in adolescent health and development. Dr. Ryan will serve as consulting investigator to this project to evaluate adolescents for whom health screens reveal significant problems.

Sarah Nicholls, Ph.D.
Dr. Nicholls is a clinical psychologist by training and has recently joined Dr. Mayes’ group at the Child Study Center after doing research in the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine for 4 years. Dr. Nicholls has considerable experience working with high-risk adult populations and in managing longitudinal follow-up projects with complex datasets. Her years of experience in the department of psychiatry give her considerable familiarity with research facilities there. She has also many years of experience working with individuals with histories of trauma and in accomplishing research interviewing. With Dr. Mayes, she will coordinate the enrollment of subjects from the larger longitudinal cohort into this study, supervise the data collection and processing, and work closely with the research associate who is a part of the core of this program.

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Project 3

Marc Potenza, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Potenza is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Potenza will direct the neuroimaging study and its integration with other clinical assessments. He will be responsible for analysis and interpretation of the data and communication of the findings. He has training in neuroscience, biochemistry and biophysics, addiction psychiatry and fMRI neuroimaging. He has been the Director of the Women and Addictive Disorders Core of Women’s Health Research at Yale for six years and has published extensively on sex differences in addictive disorders, including adolescents. He has recently participated in an NIH-sponsored workgroup on the neural correlates of risk-taking in youth and is the PI on an NIH (NIDA) R01 grant investigating gender differences in the neural correlates of videotape-induced craving in adults.

Chiang Shan Li, M.D.
Dr. Li is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and has been a Yale BIRWCH scholar and a core investigator in the Yale Specialized Center of Research (SCOR) in Stress, Sex and Addiction since 2003. Dr. Li has extensive experience in systems and cognitive neuroscience research and more recently has worked closely with Dr. Sinha and other investigators within the Yale MRI Center to develop expertise in fMRI. Dr. Li will oversee fMRI data collection and interpretation, and communication.

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Project 4

Mehmet Sofugolu, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Sofugolu is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and is Co-Principal Investigator of this project, with training and expertise in both Pharmacology and Psychiatry. Dr. Sofuoglu is an expert on sex steroid hormone influences in drug abuse, particularly nicotine and cocaine challenges. He pioneered human behavioral pharmacology studies in the area of steroid hormone influences and cocaine in the late 1990’s and has been instrumental in shaping the emerging human literature on sex steroid hormones and behavioral effects of drugs such as nicotine and cocaine. He is also leading the efforts to develop progesterone as a viable treatment option in cocaine addiction. Dr. Sofuoglu has been a SCOR investigator and taken a lead role in planning, study design and preliminary data collection of the proposed study.

Aydin Arici, M.D.
Dr. Arici is a Professor and Section Chief of Reproductive Endocrinology in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale University School of Medicine. He has been a previous research investigator of Women’s Health Research at Yale. He is a leading expert on the effects of sex steroids on reproductive function and has been a collaborator in SCOR and addiction medications development efforts. He has extensive expertise in clinical administration of progesterone to women. He will attend weekly meetings and provide clinical and medical consultation on routine and emergent issues pertaining to progesterone dosing and treatment.

Helen Fox, Ph.D.
Dr. Fox is an experimental psychologist by training with expertise in neurobiological and cognitive testing assessments. She has been appointed on the faculty as an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. She has extensive experience conducting and analyzing cognitive and neurobiological measurements. She has completed her post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Sinha on the SCOR Center stress studies where she developed expertise in coordinating the stress and drug cue induction in the laboratory sessions and in examining the role of recent cocaine use on stress induced cocaine craving and related HPA axis responses.