Renowned Neuroscientist to Address 31st Annual Graduate Student Research Forum
The 31st Annual Graduate Student Forum is set for Tuesday, March 19, featuring keynote speaker, Marina Picciotto, Ph.D.
The 31st Annual Graduate Student Forum is set for Tuesday, March 19, featuring keynote speaker, Marina Picciotto, Ph.D., the Charles B. G. Murphy Professor of Psychiatry and professor of neuroscience and of pharmacology in the Child Study Center, deputy chair for basic science research in the Department of Psychiatry and deputy director of the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience at the Yale School of Medicine. She will present “Cholinergic Control of Circuits Underlying Behaviors Related to Anxiety and Depression.” View the day’s schedule.
Dr. Picciotto’s research is focused on the complex behavior and role of single molecules in relation to addiction, depression, feeding and learning. Her laboratory studies include the roles that acetylcholine and nicotinic acetylcholine receptors play in brain function and development. She currently investigates signaling molecules downstream of nicotinic receptors and how they may mediate long term changes in behavior downstream of the receptors.
Dr. Picciotto was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering by President Clinton in 2000 and the Jacob P. Waletzky Memorial Award for Innovative Research in Drug Addiction and Alcoholism by the Society for Neuroscience in 2007. She serves as editor-in-chief of The Journal Neuroscience and is a member of the Institute of Medicine and Connecticut Academy of Science in Engineering and a fellow and chair-elect of the neuroscience section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Dr. Picciotto received her B.S. degree in biological sciences from Stanford University and her Ph.D. from the Rockefeller University.