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.
K
Iordanis Karagiannidis, PhD
Assistant Professor, Division of Digestive Diseases, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Dr. Karagiannides received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology at Plymouth State University and his Master’s degree in Genetics at University of New Hampshire. He went on to study in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. During his graduate work, he researched the intrinsic changes in fat cell differentiation with aging and accomplished demonstrating changes in the expression of numerous factors involved in adipocyte differentiation with increasing age in the field of fat tissue physiology.
The main target of his research is to study the extent of abdominal fat tissue involvement in the generation of inflammation during inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). In this research, he found that fat cells respond to proinflammatory stimuli (such as the neuropeptide substance P), shown to be present during IBD, and in turn are able to produce inflammatory cytokines themselves. Such cytokines have also been shown to be involved in IBD pathophysiology. He hopes to ultimately achieve additional results through his research and demonstrate whether fat cells actively participate in the events taking place in the colonic lumen during IBD. As a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard, Dr. Karagiannides received a three-year Fellowship Award from the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America to investigate the SP-mediated involvement of mesenteric fat tissue in the development of IBD. He joined UCLA in July of 2007 as an assistant researcher and a member of the Center of Inflammatory Bowel Disease at the Division of Digestive Diseases and was recently awarded a two-year Broad Medical Research Program grant to investigate the affects of obesity in colitis-associated changes in the intestine and mesenteric adipose tissue. Dr. Karagiannidis has been publishing his work in high quality journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Gastroenterology, and American Journal of Physiology. Dr. Karagiannides’ work is also consistently presented during the Digestive Disease Week meetings including Posters of Distinction.
Lisa Kilpatrick, PhD
Assistant Researcher, Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress
Lisa Kilpatrick’s research has focused on brain signatures related to brain-body dysregulation in stress-sensitive disorders, including irritable bowel syndrome. In addition, she has a long-standing interest in the influence of sex on these signatures, and she regularly attends and contributes to the annual meeting of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences. The exploration of sex differences in the mechanisms of treatment response is an important step towards optimizing cost-effective treatments for both men and women. In her role as a co-Investigator in the Bioinformatics Core, she will apply her advanced expertise on the analysis of resting state fMRI data, as well as other neuroimaging modalities, to implement the proposed neuroimaging analyses. She maintains this expertise through regular attendance at the Biennial Resting State Conference and Organization for Human Brain Mapping annual meeting, and she can quickly adapt to new developments in the rapidly-changing field of neuroimaging. In addition, she will lend her expertise in sex differences during the interpretation of the findings. She has collaborated with Drs. Gupta, Labus, and Mayer over the years and looks forward to contributing to this ambitious project.
Publications
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/lisa.kilpatrick.1/bibliography/43276745/public/
Barbara Knowlton, PhD
Professor and Vice Chair, Psychology, UCLA; Professor, Behavioral Neuroscience; Member, Brain Research Institute Neuroscience GPB Home Area
The focus of our lab is the study of the neural bases of memory. We use a number of different approaches, including neuroimaging and testing neuropsychological patients to describe functional differences between memory systems and the brain regions that support different memory processes.
Jason Kutch, PhD
Director, The Applied Mathematical Physiology Laboratory (AMPL); Associate Professor, Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, University of Southern California
Dr. Kutch’s laboratory is addressing the problem of chronic pelvic pain from a unique systems neuroscience perspective. He has a background in motor systems neuroscience, and have developed and published several non-invasive approaches to understanding muscle control in humans. They recently developed and published a new multimodal approach – including electromyography (EMG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) – for revealing neural mechanisms of involuntary control of pelvic floor muscles. As the co-director of the neuroimaging working group in the NIDDK-funded multi-site Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of Chronic Pelvic Pain (MAPP) Research Network, he has played a leading role in the analysis of MAPP Phase I (2008-2013) fMRI data, and he currently plays a leading role in the design, implementation, and monitoring of the MAPP Phase II study (2014-2019). He leads MAPP research efforts to reveal brain imaging differences between pelvic pain patients and healthy controls, to predict longitudinal progression of pelvic pain symptoms from neuroimaging, and to stratify pelvic pain patients according to widespreadness of pain based on neuroimaging. In the proposed work, he will assist with the acquisition and analysis of novel 7T data to study sex related differences in patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/myncbi/1B12ukyP87vQk/bibliography/47270130/public/