Associate Professor, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Department of Psychiatry
Institute for Genome Sciences
Maryland Psychiatric Research Center
University of Maryland — Medicine Institute for Neuroscience Discovery
Kahlert Institute for Addiction Medicine
I study the genetic causes and biological mechanisms of brain disorders, using human genetics, functional genomics, stem cells, and translational studies. Ongoing studies apply these techniques to neuropsychiatric disorders, substance use disorders, brain injury, and neurodegeneration. The long-term goals of these studies are to gain insight into the regulation of brain function and to enable the development of more precise diagnostics and therapies. I joined the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in September, 2016, following postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington, where I worked with Leroy Hood and Nathan Price, and at the University of California, Berkeley. where I worked with Kristin Scott. I completed my doctoral work in the laboratory of Gene Robinson at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, where I studied molecular mechanisms of honey bee social behavior.