Training Faculty

Our training program is designed to inspire the trainees, to motivate and equip them to make high-impact scientific discoveries in the drug abuse field, and to become successful independent scientists. The key to achieving these goals is the quality and commitment of the Core Training mentors. Our Core Training Faculty consist of 12 senior scientists from four different academic departments, each of whom have both research credentials and excellent training records.

The Latest on our Training Faculty

John Schneider, MD, MPH has received the 2021 Arete Award for Civic Responsibility!

 

Our T32 Training Faculty John Schneider, MD, MPH, has received the 2021 Arete Award for Civic Responsibility from the American Community Schools of Athens (ACS Athens). ACH Athens is an international school located in Athens, Greece, and Dr. Schneider received this award for providing generous guidance to the school during their COVID-19 response. Congratulations, Dr. Schneider.

Principal Investigators

Harriet de Wit, PhD

Harriet de Wit, PhD

Founder & Primary Investigator, Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory, Research Professor, Department of Psychiatry

Background:
Dr. de Wit obtained her PhD in Experimental Psychology from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, in 1981. Since then she has been associated with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago, where she is currently Professor and Director of the Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory. In addition to her role as Principal Investigator for several NIH-funded research projects, Dr. de Wit serves as Field Editor for the journal Psychopharmacology and Deputy Editor for Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. She is a consultant to the Food and Drug Administration and serves on several scientific advisory boards at other institutions. She has received several awards for her research, including the Solvay Award for Outstanding Basic Psychopharmacological Research in Affective Disorders in 1999, and the Marian W. Fischman Memorial Lectureship Award in 2009 and the European Behavioral Pharmacology Society Distinguished Investigator Award in 2019.

Research Interests:
Dr. de Wit’s research focuses on the physiological, subjective (i.e., mood-altering) and behavioral effects of drugs in healthy human volunteers. Current projects in her laboratory include: i) investigating individual differences in responses to psychoactive drugs, ii) effects of drugs at different phases of the menstrual cycle, and iii) effects of psychedelic drugs on mood and neural function. The studies are designed to improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying motivated behavior and of the processes underlying drug and alcohol use. Ultimately, we hope that studies such as these will help to identify risk factors for excessive drug use, and to predict and prevent adverse responses to drugs.

The Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory

Publicity links:

Can Microdosing Psychedelic Mushrooms Curb your Anxiety?

Tripping Hard for Science

Study measures effects of LSD microdosing

 

Xiaoxi Zhuang, PhD

Xiaoxi Zhuang, PhD

Professor, Department of Neurobiology

I investigate the molecular machinery for synaptic plasticity and information processing that underlie reinforcement learning, economic decision making and motor control. Our main approaches include mouse genetics, fly genetics, molecular biology, electrophysiology and animal learning paradigms.

Zhuang Lab

Core Training Faculty

David Gallo, PhD

David Gallo, PhD

Professor, Department of Psychology

I am interested in the impact of psychoactive drugs on learning and memory, with a focus on the impact of addictive drugs on episodic memory accuracy and distortion.  In collaboration with Harriet de Wit, we have uncovered the impact of drugs such as amphetamine and THC (a primary psychoactive ingredient of cannabis) on different stages of memory (e.g., encoding, consolidation, retrieval), false memory creation, and emotional memory biases.

Memory Research Laboratory

Alfredo J. Garcia III , PhD

Alfredo J. Garcia III , PhD

Professor, Department of Medicine

Breathing emerges from coordinated interactions across multiple networks throughout the brain.  A difficulty in breathing is a common symptom of chronic drug use and in severe cases, a primary cause of mortality during overdose. My research uses cellular and animal models to understand how drugs and the brain environment interact to influence the control of breathing and other neurobiological processes.  Current work in the laboratory is focused on understanding how drug-induced changes in blood gases may influence the efficacy of drug action on the neural networks involved with breathing. Our work is focused on improving our mechanistic understanding into the influence of homeostatic context over drug efficacy in the brain.

Garcia Lab

Chin-Tu Chen, PhD

Chin-Tu Chen, PhD

Associate Professor, Department of Radiology

Dr. Chen conducts integrative multi-modality molecular imaging in a broad spectrum of imaging-centered topics. Among other projects, he is co-principal investigator with Dr. William Green on a series of studies funded by NIDA on PET imaging of a4b2 nicotinic receptor upregulation and smoking cessation.

Department of Radiology

William Green, PhD

William Green, PhD

Professor, Department of Neurobiology

My research is focused on the cell biology of ionotropic neurotransmitter receptors, the receptors responsible for the rapid postsynaptic response in nerve and muscle. These receptors are large oligomeric membrane proteins with subunits surrounding an ion channel that opens when neurotransmitters bind to the receptor. There are two different families of ionotropic neurotransmitter receptors. One family includes nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (AChRs), GABA and glycine receptors, and the other family covers the ionotropic glutamate receptors. There are several projects ongoing in my lab characterizing the assembly, trafficking and clustering of these receptors.

Department of Neurobiology

Donald Hedeker, PhD

Donald Hedeker, PhD

Professor of Biostatistics, Department of Public Health Sciences

My chief expertise is in the development and use of advanced statistical methods for clustered and longitudinal data, with particular emphasis on mixed-effects models.  I have collaborated with smoking and nicotine researchers for many years.

Department of Public Health Sciences

Andrea King, PhD

Andrea King, PhD

Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences

My research areas of interest include alcohol response phenotype as a risk factor for future drinking exacerbations and alcohol use disorder, alcohol-smoking interactions, pharmacotherapy and behavioral treatment for alcohol and tobacco use disorders and their co-occurrence, community-based research in underserved populations, and electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use as smoking cue. I have been a PI on NIH-funded research for over 20 years, published over 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and served in numerous leadership positions for national scientific organizations and locally, including Co-Leader, Cancer Prevention and Control, University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center and past Research Section Chief, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences.

Clinical Addictions Research Laboratory

Daniel Margoliash, PhD

Daniel Margoliash, PhD

Professor, Departments of Organismal Biology and Anatomy & Psychology

My lab investigates the neurobiology and behavior of learned sequential movements, studying song learning and production in songbirds. A major component of the song system includes a pathway involving the basal ganglia and reinforcement learning.  In one line of research we are investigating intracellular (“intrinsic”) properties of song system neurons projecting to the basal ganlia that are directly tied to the individual bird’s singing behavior. One set of questions revolves around the role of dopamine and other transmitters in regulating network activity that helps set these properties.

Margoliash Lab

Daniel McGehee, PhD

Daniel McGehee, PhD

Professor, Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care

I investigate the cellular mechanisms underlying nicotine’s rewarding and antinociceptive effects. All drugs of abuse are known to enhance dopamine release from midbrain reward centers and this is a crucial step in the reinforcement of drug-taking behavior. I am specifically investigating the cellular mechanisms that contribute to this change in dopamine output. Most addictive drugs display significant analgesic profiles and our studies are also exploring the influence of nAChRs in pain control circuitry.

McGehee Lab

Harold Pollack, PhD

Harold Pollack, PhD

Helen Ross Professor, School of Social Service Administration

I co-direct the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the University of Chicago Health Lab. My research interest is in services for severely disadvantaged populations of individuals at the interface between Medicaid and the criminal justice system. As such, I am very familiar with social service and policy issues related to individuals with drug problems. I have also studied the effectiveness of drug courts to reduce the size of the incarcerated drug-offending population. I have served as a policy advisor to previous US Presidents. One example of my outreach efforts is described here.

School of Social Service Administration

John Schneider, MD, MPH

John Schneider, MD, MPH

Professor, Department of Medicine and Epidemiology

John Schneider MD, MPH is a network epidemiologist and interventionist who examines substance use disorder among most vulnerable populations including those with criminal justice involvement.  He focuses on the social and structural factors that create a context of substance use, mental health problems and infectious disease transmission like HIV and STIs.  He lead a NIDA analytic Center to develop advanced methods to better understand opioid overdose prevention among criminal justice involved populations with a particular interest in Black/African American community members.

Public Health Sciences

Mark Sheffield, PhD

Mark Sheffield, PhD

Professor, Department of Neurobiology

The capacity to acquire, store and recall knowledge of the world through experience and use this knowledge to maximize reward and avoid danger is essential for survival. In humans, this ability is fundamental to our sense of self and is in large part what makes us who we are. The brain’s memory systems are also vulnerable to disease and trauma, such as Alzheimer’s disease and post-traumatic stress disorder, and are also greatly impacted by addiction. 

My lab uses a combination of approaches to measure the activity of large populations of neurons, dendrites and axons in the hippocampus, which is known to be critical for memory function in both mice and humans, while mice experience virtual environments and are forming or recalling specific memories. We can also use light to control the activity of particular neurons or circuits, giving us a way to control the neural representations and circuits involved in memory.

Together, our aim is to reveal the features of neural function at the level of populations of neurons and brain-wide circuits down to the level of synapses, that allow for the formation and recall of specific memories, and in this way, we hope to provide insight into how these memory systems are altered during addiction and disease.

Department of Neurobiology

Ming Xu, PhD

Ming Xu, PhD

Professor, Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care

My long-term research interest is to understand mechanisms underlying drug addiction and to find possible treatment.  We use behavioral, genetic, anatomical and molecular biological methods.  One major research project is to identify mechanisms and neuronal circuits associated with reconsolidation and extinction of cocaine-induced reward memory.  Another project is to develop a novel method of using skin stem cells to deliver therapeutic genes to combat the abuse of cocaine, ethanol, nicotine and their co-abuse. 

Department of Anesthesia & Critical Care

External Advisory Committee

Kathryn Cunningham, PhD

Kathryn Cunningham, PhD

Director of the Center for Addiction Research, Chauncey Leake Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, Vice Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology, The University of Texas Medical Branch

Jakie McGinty, PhD

Jakie McGinty, PhD

Professor of Neuroscience & Director of the Neuroscience Institute, Medical University of South Carolina

Jill B. Becker, PhD

Jill B. Becker, PhD

Patricia Y. Gurin Collegiate Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan

Resource Faculty

Demet Araç, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology  

Timothy Carroll, PhD

Professor, Department of Radiology  

Daniel Fridberg, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience  

Chuan He, PhD

HHMI Investigator, John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Chemistry  

Gregory Karczmar, PhD

Professor, Department of Radiology  

Narayanan (Bobby) Kasthuri, MD, DPhil

Neuroscience Researcher, Argonne National Laboratory, Assistant Professor (adjunct), Department of Neurobiology  

Sarah Keedy, PhD

Assistant Research Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience