Members of the Center for Neurobiology of Stress fall into one or more of the following categories: (1) investigators at UCLA, VAGLAHS, Ohio State University, University of Pittsburgh, or other campus who are principal or co-principal investigators with peer-reviewed, competitive funding for research in neurovisceral sciences, gastrointestinal disorders, urological disorders, and stress neurobiology, and stress-immune system interactions, particularly related to sex-based differences and whose research directly impacts the goals of the Center; (2) division chiefs in gastroenterology, urology, obstetrics and gynecology, and psychiatry; (3) directors or co-directors of programs or cores, or individuals who have relevant roles within the Center and (4) clinicians who have made significant contributions to the main subject matters of the Center.
If you are interested in becoming a member, please contact Million Mulugeta, DVM, PhD at mmuluget@ucla.edu.
Members are listed in alphabetical order.
A
Jeffrey Alger, PhD
Professor, Departments of Neurology and Radiology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Dr. Jeffry R. Alger received a PhD in biophysical chemistry under the direction of Professor James H. Prestegard at Yale University in 1979. Dr. Alger’s PhD dissertation research focused on nuclear magnetic resonance magnetization transfer. He did postdoctoral training on multinuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) of cells and living animals in the Yale Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry between 1979 and 1984 under the direction of Dr. Robert G. Shulman. During his appointment as assistant professor in the Yale Department of Radiology (1984-1986), he participated in the design and construction of the first Magnetic Resonance Center at the Yale University School of Medicine. From 1986 until 1994, Dr. Alger was a staff scientist, and later a section chief, at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland. During this period he performed some of the first proton MRS studies of human brain cancer and was an early pioneer in diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of stroke. In 1994, Dr. Alger moved to Los Angeles and became a faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Department of Radiology and in the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center. He was promoted to the rank of Professor in July 2000. His primary faculty appointment moved to the UCLA Department of Neurology in 2005. His current research lies in neuroscience imaging applications of MRI with focus on MRS, diffusion tensor imaging and perfusion imaging. A general research goal is to develop magnetic resonance biomarkers that can assess neurological diseases and disorders. He collaborates with teams doing clinical trials and clinical research studies involving stroke, traumatic brain injury, cerebral neoplasia, multiple sclerosis and HIV dementia. In 2007 his laboratory acquired a 7 T 30 cm MRI system which is being used to pursue analogous research in animal models. Dr. Alger has co-authored more than 140 peer-reviewed publications. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and by private foundations. Dr. Alger is affiliated with UCLA’s Interdepartmental Program in Biomedical Physics where he teaches graduate level courses in human anatomy and medical imaging. He also supervises the dissertation research of medical physics PhD students.
John Allman, PhD
Frank P. Hixon Professor of Neurobiology, Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology
Peter A. Anton, MD
Director, Mucosal Immunology Core (CFAR) UCLA Center for HIV Prevention Research (CPR); Professor, Department of Medicine, Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases,, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Dr. Anton is the Director of the UCLA Center for HIV and Digestive Diseases and co-Director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Center at UCLA. Dr. Anton’s research is in the field of mucosal immunology and was initially directed toward identifying mechanisms underlying the neuroimmunomodulatory responses in IBD. His expertise in T cell acquisition from endoscopic biopsies and interest in the mucosal immune system has been applied to the area of HIV pathogenesis. This has entailed optimizing assays for isolating mucosal T cells for phenotypic analysis by flow and quantitating HIV viral burden in the tissue (both HIV RNA and DNA). His current research uses these assays and other developing indices of mucosal immune response to assess (i) the degree of mucosal inflammation and altered co-receptor expression associated with HIV infection (and associated therapeutic interventions) and (ii) the potential use of the mucosa as a route of HIV immunization. Dr. Anton is active in the NIH-sponsored AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), Mucosal Immunology Focus Group, and in efforts to clarify the role of compartments in HIV pathogenesis.
Selected References:
Cole SW, Kemeny ME, Weitzman OB, Schoen M, Anton PA. Socially inhibited individuals show heightened DTH response during intense social engagement. Brain, Behavior and Immunity. 1999; 13:187-200.
Rawsthorne P, Shanahan F, Cronin NC, Anton PA, Löfberg R, Bohman L, Bernstein CN. An international survey of the use and attitudes regarding alternative medicine by patients with inflammatory bowel disease. American Journal of Gastroenterology. 1999; 94:1298-1303.
Goode T, O’Connell J, Anton P, Wong H, Reeve J, O’Sullivan GC, Collins JK, Shanahan F. Neurokinin-1 receptor expression in inflammatory bowel disease: molecular quantitation and localisation. Gut (England). 2000; 47(3):387-96.
Arthur Arnold, PhD
Director, Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology of the Brain Research Institute; Distinguished Professor, Department of Integrative Biology & Physiology, UCLA
We study the biological origins of sex differences, especially in the brain. All sex differences stem from the differential effects of genes on the sex chromosomes. We study the direct efffects of sex chromosome genes on the brain and other cells, differences caused by X- and Y-linked genes. We also study the indirect effects of these genes, for example the powerful sex-specific effects of gonadal hormones. Our studies focus on two model systems in songbirds and mice. We exploit mouse models in which gonadal sex (testes vs. ovaries) is independent of sex chromosome complement(XX vs. XY). In songbirds, we study the neural circuit for song, which is structurally much different in males and females. We also study the basic properites of sex chromosomes in birds, and mechanisms of sex chromosome dosage compensation.
Selected References:
Gatewood JD, Wills A, Shetty S, Xu J, Arnold AP, Burgoyne PS, Rissman EF. 2006. Sex chromosome complement and gonadal sex influence aggressive and parental behaviors in mice Journal of Neuroscience 26: 2335-2342 .
Itoh Y, Kampf K, Arnold AP. 2006. Assignment of human X chromosome-syntenic genes to a zebra finch microchromosome by in situ hybridization of BAC clones Cytogenetic and Genome Research 112: 343-344 .
Xu J, Taya, S, Kaibuchi K, Arnold AP.. 2005. Spatially and temporally specific expression in mouse hippocampus of Usp9x, a ubiquitin-specific protease involved in synaptic development. Journal of Neuroscience Research 80: 47-55 .
Itoh Y, Arnold AP. 2005. Chromosomal polymorphism and comparative painting analysis in the zebra finch Chromosome Research 13: 47-56 .
Palaszynski KM, Smith DL, Burgoyne PS, Arnold AP, Voskuhl RR. 2005. A yin-yang effect between sex chromosomes and sex hormones on the immune response Endocrinology 146: 3280-3285 .
Chen X, Agate RJ, Itoh Y, Arnold AP. 2005. Sexually dimorphic expression of trkB, a Z-linked gene, in early posthatch zebra finch brain Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 102: 7730-7735 .
Xu J, Taya S, Kaibuchi K, Arnold AP. 2005. Sexually dimorphic expression of Usp9x is related to sex chromosome complement in adult mouse brain European Journal of Neuroscience 21: 3017-3022 .
Kim Y-H, Arnold AP.. 2005. Distribution and onset of aldehyde dehydrogenase (zRalDH) expression in zebra finch brain: lack of sex difference in HVC and RA at early posthatch ages Journal of Neurobiology 65: 260-268 .
Xu J, Watkins R, Arnold AP.. 2005. Sexually dimorphic expression of the X-linked gene Eif2s3x mRNA but not protein in mouse brain Gene Expression Patterns 6: 146-155 .
Luo M., Yu Y, Kim H, Kudrna D, Itoh Y, Agate RJ, Melamed E, Goicoechea JL, Talag J, Mueller C, Wang W, Currie J, Sisneros NB, Wing RA, Arnold AP. 2005. Utilization of a zebra finch BAC library to determine the structure of an avian androgen receptor genomic region Genomics 87: 181-190 .
B
Pierre Baldi, PhD
Distinguished Professor, Department of Computer Science, School of Information and Computer Sciences, UCI; Director, Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics; Associate Director, Center for Machine Learning and Data Mining
Pierre Baldi has been the Founding Director of the UCI Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics (IGB) and its Bioinformatics Laboratory for the past 18 years, with a primary appointment in the UCI Department of Computer Science and a joint appointment in the Departments of Biological Chemistry in the School of Medicine, in the Department of Developmental and Cell Biology in the School of Biological Sciences, and the Department of Statistics in the School of Information and Computer Sciences. He has expertise in statistics, machine learning (deep learning), and bioinformatics and their applications to big data problems in genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, systems biology, computational neuroscience, and biomedical imaging. His laboratory has produced and maintained datatabases, programs, and web servers that are widely used by the scientific community including the ChemDB database of small molecules, the SCRATCH suite of protein feature predictors, the Cyber-T program for the differential analysis of gene expression data, and the MotifMap system for charting transcription factor binding sites on a genomewide scale and for supporting gene regulatory mechanisms inferences. Through the IGB and his laboratory, he is also directly responsible for the informatics infrastructure and analysis for all the high-throughput data produced by the UCI Genomics High-Throughput Facility. His laboratory has designed entire pipelines for analyzing high-throughput sequencing data [see, for instance: M. Zeller, C. Magnan, V. R. Patel, P. Rigor. L. Sender, and P. Baldi. A Genomic Analysis Pipeline and Its Application to Pediatric Cancers. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, 11, 5, 826-839, (2014)]. He has mentored over 40 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and for 10 years and was the PI and Director of the NIH-NLM sponsored T32 BIT (Biomedical Informatics Training) grant at UCI.
Publications
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/myncbi/pierre.baldi.1/bibliography/48012401/public
Lori Birder, PhD
Professor, Medicine, Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, University of Pittsburgh
My laboratory is interested in understanding the complexities of urinary bladder epithelial (urothelial) cell function and urothelial cell-neuronal interactions. Our investigations have revealed that the urothelium, a stratified epithelial layer that lines the bladder lumen, might have the capacity to send signals to neighboring cells via the release of chemical mediators such as nitric oxide (NO) and ATP.
Our recent identification of a number of functional receptors/ion channels in bladder urothelial cells and the possible involvement of these receptors/ion channels in the release of mediators suggest that these cells exhibit specialized sensory and signaling properties. For example, we recently found that vanilloid receptor 1 (TRPV1) is expressed not only by afferent nerves that form close contacts with urothelial cells, but also by the urothelial cells themselves.
This arrangement would represent a departure from the conventional view of the urothelium as a simple barrier and provide further support for our speculation that the urothelium has “neuron-like” properties and that it may play a role in sensory mechanisms in the urinary bladder. Through an array of experimental approaches that include molecular biology (mouse knockouts; micro array analysis), measurement of transmitters (ATP, NO), Ca2+/confocal imaging techniques and in vivo monitoring of afferent and reflex bladder activity, our goals are to further characterize the properties of urothelial cells.
Elucidation of mechanisms impacting on urothelial function in addition to how pathology may impact on mechanisms of urothelial communication may provide important insight into targets for new therapies for the clinical management of lower urinary tract disorders.
Selected References
Hanna-Mitchell AT, JM Beckel, S Barbadora, AJ Kanai, WC de Groat and LA Birder. Non-neuronal acetylcholine and urinary bladder urothelium. Life Sciences in press.
Chopra B, SE Barrick, S Meyers, JM Beckel, ML Zeidel, AP Ford, WC de Groat and LA Birder. Expression and function of bradykinin B1 and B2 receptors in normal and inflamed rat urinary bladder urothelium Journal of Physiology 562:859-871, 2005.
Birder LA, A Wolf-Johnston, CA Buffington, JR Roppolo, WC de Groat and AJ Kanai. Altered inducible nitric oxide synthase expression and nitric oxide production in the bladder of cats with feline interstitial cystitis. Journal of Urology 173:625-629, 2005.
Birder LA, HZ Ruan, B Chopra, Z Xiang, S Barrick, CA Buffington, JR Roppolo, AP Ford, WC de Groat and G Burnstock. Alterations in P2X and P2Y purinergic receptor expression in urinary bladder from normal cats and cats with interstitial cystitis. Am J Physiology 287:F1084-1091, 2004.
Birder LA, Y Nakamura, S Kiss, M Nealen, S Barrick, AJ Kanai, E Wang, G Ruiz, WC de Groat, G Apodaca, W Watkins and MJ Caterina. Altered bladder function in mice lacking the vanilloid receptor TRPV1. Nature Neuroscience 5(9):856-890, 2002.
Susan Bookheimer, PhD
Joaquin Fuster Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA
Dr. Susan Bookheimer is Clinical Neuropsychologist and Professor-in-Residence in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Department of Psychology. She specializes in functional brain imaging with PET and functional MRI. Her work has focused on the organization of language and memory in the brain, in healthy adults and children and in neurologic conditions and developmental disorders. Recent work focuses on understanding the neural basis of social communication deficits in autism using functional MRI, encompassing both verbal and non-verbal communication, and focusing on emotional aspects of social comprehension.
Dr. Bookheimer also maintains active research programs imaging dyslexia, Alzheimer’s disease, and pre-surgical planning in patients with brain lesions such as tumors, arterio-venous malformations, and epilepsy. Dr. Bookheimer received her Bachelors degree in psychology from Cornell University in 1982, and her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Wayne State University in 1989. She performed a postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health before coming to UCLA in 1993.
C
Lin Chang, MD
Director, Functional GI Disroders Program, UCLA G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience; Vice-Chief, Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Lin Chang is a gastroenterologist and physician scientist who serves as Co-Director of the G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience, an interdisciplinary center with a research and clinical focus on the interactions of pain, stress and emotions in health and disease. She has served as Co-Director of the Administrative Core of our Center’s NIH Specialized Centers of Research (SCOR), which has been funded for the past 16 years. Our SCOR has focused on sex differences in brain-gut interactions mainly with regard to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). She has served as PI of one of the projects for each cycle. For this SCORE renewal, she will serve as Multi-PI, Co-Lead of Project 1, Co-Lead of the Career Enhancement Core (CEC), and Co-Lead of the Administrative Core. As Co-Lead of the CEC, she will oversee the collaboration with the pilot and feasibility programs to provide seed grant funding, oversee the recruitment and mentoring of young investigators, and organization of educational conferences. She has been performing clinical and translational research studies, including clinical treatment trials for 25 years. Her research has focused on brain-gut interactions, specifically pathophysiologic mechanisms, clinical symptoms, health outcomes, and treatment in IBS. She has mentored 3 gastroenterology research fellows on the UCLA Gastroenterology T32 training grant in addition to 10 clinical GI fellows, 11 medical residents, 3 post-docs, 8 visiting scientists, 10 medical students, and 5 pre-med students. Her leadership positions include Vice-Chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases at UCLA, Program Director of the UCLA GI Fellowship Program, Clinical Research Councilor of the AGA Governing Board, President of the American Neurogastroenterology and Motility Society (ANMS), member of the Rome Foundation Board of Directors. She currently serving a 4-year term on the NIH Clinical, Integrative and Molecular Gastroenterology Study Section and FDA GI Advisory Committee.
Publications
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/myncbi/lin.chang.1/bibliography/40548865/public
Marie-Francoise Chesselet, MD, PhD
Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Neurobiology; Interim Chair of the Department of Neurology at UCLA
Marie-Françoise Chesselet is the Charles H. Markham Professor of Neurology, distinguished Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Neurobiology, and Interim Chair of the Department of Neurology at UCLA. After receiving the M.D. and Ph.D. degrees in Paris, France, she held research positions in France and faculty positions at the Medical College of Pennsylvania and the University of Pennsylvania, before joining UCLA in 1996. At UCLA, Dr. Chesselet chaired the Department of Neurobiology from 2002 to 2013 and is currently the Director of the Integrative Center for Neural Repair, which includes the Center for the Study of Parkinson’s Disease at UCLA she created in 1998. She has directed the NINDS-funded UCLA UDALL Center for Parkinson’s disease research from 1998 to 2013, the NIEHS-funded UCLA Center for Gene Environment in Parkinson’s Disease from 2002 to 2014, and the UCLA Advanced Center for Parkinson’s Disease Research of the American Parkinson Disease Association since 1998. Dr. Chesselet has directed graduate programs at the University of Pennsylvania and UCLA and has directed the NINDS-funded Training Program in Neural Repair from 1998 to 2014. Her laboratory conducts research on the molecular mechanisms of disorders of the basal ganglia and new treatments for Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases. Her work has been extensively supported by the NIH, the Michael J. Fox Foundation, Cure HD Initiative, and several bio pharmaceutical companies. She currently holds grants from the Department of Defense, CIRM, and Tsumura Inc. Dr. Chesselet is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and currently chair its section on Neuroscience. She just completed a 4 years term on the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council.
Mark Cohen, PhD
Professor in-Residence, Cognitive Psychology, UCLA
Mark Cohen’s training is equal parts engineering and neuroscience. His contributions include his critical role in the development of practical echo-planar scanning, ultra-fast MRI applications, contrast-based and BOLD functional MRI, applications of linear systems analysis to increase fMRI sensitiivity and resolution, and concurrent recordings of EEG and fMRI to better understand brain dynamics and distributed processing. He and his lab have contributed to an understanding of the power of pattern recognition and machine learning to both interpet/classify neural data and as a source of discovery of the processes that result in cognition, perception, emotion and pathology.
Cohen is passionate about graduate and post-graduate education. As the creator and director of the UCLA/Semel NeuroImaging Training Program he has pushed his students to an integrative understanding of the role of imaging in neuroscience: The use of images as hypothesis tests, the relationship between blurring, convolution, statistical error and inference from images, and an understanding of the structures common to neuroimages regardless of imaging modality.
His current focus now includes inquiry into the broader problems of images, beyond neuroscience, to encompass astronomy and nanoscale imaging, aesthetics to statistics, dimensional compression and dimensional expansion.
Cohen holds appointments in the UCLA Departments of Psychiatry, Neurology, Radiology, Biomedical Engineering, Psychology and Biomedical Physics and is a member of the California NanoSystems Institute.
Ian Cook, MD
Director of the UCLA Depression Research and Clinic Program at the Semel Institute; Chief of the TMS Treatment Service in the Department of Psychiatry
Ian A. Cook, M.D. holds the Joanne and George Miller and Family Endowed Chair in Depression Research. He is a Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in the David Geffen School of Medicine, and a Research Scientist at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Dr. Cook received his bachelors degree with high honors from Princeton University and his medical degree from the Yale University School of Medicine. He completed his psychiatry residency training at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute, where he also was an NIMH-funded research fellow. Dr. Cook served on the Executive Committee on Practice Guidelines of the American Psychiatric Association, and guided the electronic dissemination of their evidence-based guidelines in psychiatry. A board-certified Psychiatrist, he has also served as an examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. His biography is profiled in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, and Best Doctors. He is the author of numerous publications on brain function in mental illness and in aging, and holds several patents on biomedical devices and methods.
Michelle G. Craske, PhD
Professor, Department of Psychology, UCLA
Dr. Craske is Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, and Director of the Anxiety Disorders Research Center, University of California, Los Angeles. She has published widely on the topics of fear and anxiety disorders, their etiology, assessment and treatment. She has been the recipient of continuous NIMH funding since 1993 for research projects pertaining to risk factors for phobias, anxiety disorders and depression; attentional biases and psychophysiological fear responding; the translation of basic science of fear extinction to human phobias and mechanisms of exposure therapy; and the development and implementation of treatments for anxiety and related disorders. Dr. Craske was Associate Editor for the Journal of Abnormal Psychology and is currently Associate Editor for Behaviour Research and Therapy is a Scientific Board Member for the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, and a member of the Anxiety Disorders Work Group for DSM-V.
Selected References:
Craske MG, Wolitzky-Taylor KB, Mineka S, Zinbarg R, Waters AM, Vrshek-Schallhorn S, Epstein A, Naliboff B, Ornitz E. Elevated responding to safe conditions as a specific risk factor for anxiety versus depressive disorders: Evidence from a longitudinal investigation. J Abnorm Psychol. 2011.
Craske MG, Wolitzky-Taylor KB, Labus J, Wu S, Frese M, Mayer EA, Naliboff BD. A cognitive-behavioral treatment for irritable bowel syndrome using interoceptive exposure to visceral sensations. Behav Res Ther. 2011 Jun;49(6-7):413-21. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3100429.
Craske MG, Stein MB, Sullivan G, Sherbourne C, Bystritsky A, Rose RD, Lang AJ, Welch S, Campbell-Sills L, Golinelli D, Roy-Byrne P. Disorder-specific impact of coordinated anxiety learning and management treatment for anxiety disorders in primary care. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2011 Apr;68(4):378-88. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3074172.
Craske MG, Kircanski K, Epstein A, Wittchen HU, Pine DS, Lewis-Fernández R, Hinton D; DSM V Anxiety; OC Spectrum; Posttraumatic and Dissociative Disorder Work Group. Panic disorder: a review of DSM-IV panic disorder and proposals for DSM-V. Depress Anxiety. 2010 Feb;27(2):93-112. Review.
E
Benjamin Ellingson, PhD
Director, UCLA Brain Tumor Imaging Laboratory (BTIL); Co-Director, Center for Computer Vision and Imaging Biomarkers; Professor, Department of Radiology at David Geffen School of Medicine
As Director of the UCLA Brain Tumor Imaging Laboratory and Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Computer Vision and Imaging Biomarkers (CVIB) his research focuses on the development, testing, validation, and implementation of advanced MR and PET imaging biomarkers for brain pathology and response evaluation in clinical trials. He possess a broad background in biomedical engineering, image processing, MR and PET imaging physics, functional and molecular imaging, bioelectronics, medical instrumentation, and statistical parameter mapping. He has been co-author on more than 100 peer-reviewed original research articles relating to advanced neuroimaging and medical imaging physics. He has wide-ranging experience in designing and implementing multicenter neuroimaging trials. This includes trials in primary and metastatic brain cancers; neurotrauma including traumatic brain injury (TBI), traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI), and degenerative spinal disease; psychiatric diseases including schizophrenia; epilepsy, tuberous sclerosis complex, and other neurodegenerative diseases; and chronic pain syndromes including cervical spondylotic myelopathy, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), chronic headaches, and urological chronic pelvic pain syndrome (UCPPS). He is also the principal investigator for the imaging core in numerous industry-funded therapeutic clinical trials in brain tumors, chronic pain, epilepsy, and schizophrenia.
In this proposal, he will be Co-Lead of Project 2 and will be responsible for the design and analysis of all brainstem and brain MRI experiments, including optimization of protocols for both 3T and 7T imaging. His laboratory will post-process anatomic and diffusion MR imaging data, and work closely with Neuroimaging and Bioinformatics Core to identify sex-related differences in the brain and brainstem within IBS patients and the association with clinical symptoms and gut microbial parameters.
Publications
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/myncbi/1t5OXTmr85Skz/bibliography/50293169/public/
Eric Esrailian, MD
Associate Clinical Professor, Department of Medicine; Lincy Foundation Chair, Clinical Gastroenterology; Co-Chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Dr. Esrailian attended the University of California at Berkeley and graduated with a major in Integrative Biology and a minor in English. He subsequently graduated from the Loma Linda University School of Medicine and completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of Southern California.
He was named intern, junior resident, and senior resident of the year during all three years of his residency training. He completed his gastroenterology fellowship at UCLA where he also obtained a Masters of Public Health degree with the assistance of an NIH sponsored training grant. He is also a graduate of the Executive Program in Management from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Dr. Esrailian served on the Medical Board of California from 2010-2011 after being appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Dr. Esrailian’s primary clinical interests include gastrointestinal endoscopy, inflammatory bowel diseases, gastrointestinal hemorrhage, and functional gastrointestinal diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome. In addition to disease areas within gastroenterology and internal medicine, Dr. Esrailian has a particular interest in the development of biomedical innovations, value in health care, medical education, and initiatives towards patient-centered care.
In 2012, the School of Medicine awarded him the Lincy Foundation Chair in Clinical Gastroenterology. He is closely involved in growth strategy and strategic planning efforts for the UCLA Health System and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He also works to facilitate community engagement with a number of other schools and departments within the UCLA campus and its Los Angeles community partners, and he is on the UCLA campus steering committee for the Centennial Campaign.
Christopher Evans, PhD
Director, Brain Research Institute, Hatos Center for Neuropharmacology; Professor, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA
Dr. Chris Evans is currently Director of the UCLA Brain Research Institute and the Stefan Hatos Professor directing the Shirley and Stefan Hatos Center for Neurophamacology in the UCLA Semel Institute. Dr. Evans is also director of a NIH-funded center – The Center for Opioid Receptors and Drugs of Abuse or CSORDA. CSORDA, with continuous NIH funding for over 25 years.
Selected References:
Gioiosa, L. Chen, X. Watkins, R. Klanfer, N. Bryant, C. D. Evans, C. J. Arnold, A. P. Sex chromosome complement affects nociception in tests of acute and chronic exposure to morphine in mice. Horm Behav. 2008; 53(1): 124-30.
Walwyn, W. Evans, C. J. Hales, T. G. Beta-arrestin2 and c-Src regulate the constitutive activity and recycling of mu opioid receptors in dorsal root ganglion neurons. J Neurosci. 2007; 27(19): 5092-104.
Kho, S. T. Lopez, I. A. Evans, C. Ishiyama, A. Ishiyama, G. Immunolocalization of orphanin FQ in rat cochlea. Brain Res. 2006; 1113(1): 146-52.
Bryant, C. D. Roberts, K. W. Byun, J. S. Fanselow, M. S. Evans, C. J. Morphine analgesic tolerance in 129P3/J and 129S6/SvEv mice. Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 2006; 85(4): 769-79.
Walwyn, W. M. Wei, W. Xie, C. W. Chiu, K. Kieffer, B. L. Evans, C. J. Maidment, N. T. Mu opioid receptor-effector coupling and trafficking in dorsal root ganglia neurons. Neuroscience. 2006; 142(2): 493-503.
F
Michael Fanselow, PhD
Professor, Department of Psychology, UCLA; Area Chair, Learning and Behavior
Dr. Fanselow has held academic appointments at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute and Dartmouth College before coming to UCLA in 1987. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington, where he received the Edwin B Newman Award for Excellence in Research. He has also received the Early Career Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association and the Troland Award from the National Academy of Science for his analysis of basic mechanisms of motivational systems. He is interested in how the neural systems that control fear, pain and recuperation interact with each other to produce both adaptive and maladaptive behavior. He was elected President of the American Psychological Association’s Division of Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology and is currently President of the Pavlovian Society.
Selected References:
Fanselow MS, LeDoux JE. Why we think plasticity underlying Pavlovian fear conditioning occurs in the basolateral amygdala. Neuron. 1999; 23:229-232.
Fendt M, Fanselow MS. The neuroanatomical and neurochemical basis of conditioned fear. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. 1999; 23:743-760.
Li HH, Yu W-H, Rozengurt N, Zhao H-Z, Lyons KM, Anagnostaras S, Fanselow MS, Suzuki K, Vanier MT, Neufeld EF. Mouse model of Sanfilippo syndrome type B produced by targeted disruption of the gene encoding alpha -N-acetylglucosaminidase. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 1999; 96:14505-14510.
Fawzy Fawzy, MD
FDB Contact/Coordinator and Professor, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences; Associate Director, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA
Affiliated with UCLA since 1973, Dr. Fawzy’s main area of research is the interface of psychiatry and medicine, specifically psycho-oncology. Dr. Fawzy has authored 109 published manuscripts, articles and chapters, including “A structured psychiatric intervention for cancer patients: I. Changes over time in methods of coping and affective disturbance,” “A structured psychiatric intervention for cancer patients: II. Changes over time in immunologic measures,” and “Malignant Melanoma: Effects of an early structured psychiatric intervention, coping, and affective state on recurrence and survival 6 years later,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 1990, 1990, 1993, and 2003 respectively; the manual entitled, “A Structured Psychoeducational Intervention for Cancer Patients,” General Hospital Psychiatry, 1994, and “Critical Review of Psychosocial Interventions in Cancer Care,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 1995.
In addition, he has co-edited four books. Dr. Fawzy serves as a consultant to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the American Cancer Society (ACS). He is a member of the review committee for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. Professional societies include: Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (England), the American Psychiatric Association, the American College of Psychiatrists, the Pacific Rim College of Psychiatrists, and the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine. Dr. Fawzy is past President of the American Society of Psychiatric Oncology and AIDS, and past President of the International Psycho-Oncology Society (IPOS).
G
Michael Goldstein, PhD
Faculty Associate, UCLA Center for Health Policy Research; UCLA Associate Vice-Provost for the Healthy Campus Initiative; Professor, Community Health Sciences and Sociology
Michael S. Goldstein, PhD, is a professor of public health (community health sciences) and sociology, and UCLA’s associate vice-provost in charge of the Healthy Campus Initiative. He has also served the campus as interim vice provost for graduate education and dean of the graduate division.A faculty associate at the Center, Goldstein was co-principal investigator and program director of CHIS-CAM, an NCI-funded follow-up study to the 2001 California Health Interview Survey that examines use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) among California adults, particularly those with cancer and other chronic illnesses. At UCLA, he teaches graduate courses on complementary and alternative medicine, self-help and self-care.Goldstein’s published research on CAM spans 30 years.During the late 1980s his research examined factors that led conventionally trained physicians to become involved with CAM. In the early 1990s, Goldstein spent two years conducting research at The Wellness Community, a support center for people with cancer that is receptive to many forms of CAM. In the mid-1990s, he was among the very first researchers supported by the Office of Alternative Medicine for his study of patient satisfaction with homeopathic treatment. More recently, he collaborated on a study to compare the impact of treatment confidence on pain and disability among patients with low-back pain treated by either physicians or chiropractors. His current work deals with the potential for CAM providers to assume a greater role in the provision of primary care in the nation’s health care system.
Goldstein is the author of two books: The Health Movement: Promoting Fitness in America (Macmillan 1992), and Alternative Health Care: Medicine, Miracle, or Mirage(Temple Univ. 1999). Both strive to understand changes in the way people seek to prevent and respond to serious illnesses, like cancer, as part of broader social and cultural changes in American society.
Goldstein received his doctorate from Brown University and has conducted research on a wide array of topics dealing with the behavior of people with chronic illness.
Arpana Gupta, PhD
Co-Director, Neuroimaging and Bioinformatics Core, G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience; Assistant Professor, Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Arpana Gupta is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Neuroimaging Core at the UCLA G. Oppenheimer Center of Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience (CNSR); where she specializes in research that investigates the interactions between environmental and biological factors in shaping neurobiological phenotypes associated with stress-based diseases such as obesity and metabolic syndrome. Her current program of research, broadly defined, is based on developing a model that aims to understand the bidirectional interaction of the brain with those in the periphery (immune cells, gut microbiota-related metabolites), and the modification of these interactions by vulnerability or protective factors (adverse life events, sex, race, socioeconomic status [SES], resilience, diet) related to obesity and ingestive behaviors. More recently she has been investigating diet interventions in altering the brain-gut microbiome axis on health and disease. Another main area of interest is sex differences in central responses related to the brain-gut microbiome axis, as well as its relationship to various disease states. She applies advanced multivariate analytic techniques in order to integrate data from multiple neuroimaging sources, inflammatory markers, microbiome and metabolite profiles, and behavioral data, in order to determine the unique variance associated with altered brain gut microbiome axis in specific disorders. In 2016, she received a mentored K23 grant and in 2020 a R03 grant from the NIH NIDDK to investigate the brain-gut microbiome influences in obesity. She has also received funding from the AGA Rome Foundation, Biocodex, and pilot funds from the UCLA CURE/CTSI program.
Publications
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/myncbi/1v_1kl872tPQf/bibliography/46222127/public
H
Ronald Harper, PhD
Distinguished Professor, Neurobiology, UCLA
Dr. Harper received his doctorate from McMaster University (Ontario, Canada) in 1968, and was later a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anatomy at UCLA. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology, UCLA and a member of the UCLA Brain Research Institute. The primary objective of his research program is to determine the neural mechanisms that underlie the control of breathing and cardiovascular action during sleep. His laboratory examines these mechanisms through basic studies of neural functioning in animals and physiological and neural imaging studies of humans with normal and disordered breathing during sleep. The conditions with aberrant breathing and cardiovascular action include the sudden death of infants during sleep in the first six months of life (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, SIDS, crib death), infants who are unable to sustain ventilation during sleep (Congenital Central Hypoventilation Syndrome, CCHS, “Ondine’s Curse”), and adults with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) or heart failure; both of the latter conditions are characterized by severely impaired breathing and cardiovascular control during sleep. Dr. Harper’s publications include over 250 original articles, review articles, chapters and editorials; he has co-edited two books and participated in numerous national and international conferences and symposia. He is the P.I. on two grants, one on physiological development in SIDS and one on the neural control of cardiorespiratory function; he is also a subcontract P.I. on a SCOR Program grant on neural sites mediating obstructive sleep apnea (P.I. Jerome Siegel). He has served as a co-investigator on several grants, including a multi-site training program for basic sleep research (P.I. Michael Chase), a training program in oral-facial motor control (P.I. G. Bernard) and one dealing with sleep disordered breathing and the metabolic syndrome (P.I. M. Saad). He has served on the editorial board of several scientific journals and has served as a consulting reviewer on many leading journals, including Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, Experimental Neurology, Journal of Applied Physiology, Journal of Physiology and American Journal of Physiology. Over the years, he has sponsored or co-sponsored several successful NIH K-series awards (Drs. M. Scher, D. Gozal, U. Rao, M. Woo, E. Pae). Dr. Harper’s principal teaching efforts have been in a professional school course, Functional Neuroanatomy for the first year UCLA Dental School class; he also participates in several Neuroscience and Neurobiology graduate courses throughout the year. Dr. Harper’s laboratory has continued to be as source of innovative procedures for teaching, including 3-D visualization of neural material, partially acquired from his own imaging research efforts, and development of video material on CD-ROM media used to demonstrate neural pathology. Over the years Dr. Harper has trained 12 graduate students and overseen the research for 23 postdoctoral fellows, as well as a number of Student Research Program undergraduates and students from the CARE Program. A substantial portion of his time has been devoted to professional and UCLA service, including the School of Dentistry Faculty Executive Committee, the School of Dentistry Committee, the Chancellor’s Committee on Vivarium Usage and the departmental Committee for Advancement to Professorial Rank.