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.
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.