Program Directors
Kate Wassum, PhD. The Wassum lab’s goal is to discover the neural signals and circuits that underlie reward learning, motivation, and decision making to enable the understanding and treatment the maladaptive motivation and decision making that characterizes addiction and psychiatric diseases. Her lab takes a multidisciplinary approach to research, combining behavioral procedures rooted in the rich traditions of learning theory with advanced neural recording, interference, and/or molecular methods. Dr. Wassum’s current and prior mentees include 50 undergraduates, 8 post-bacs, 7 graduate students, and 10 postdocs, most of whom have received independent federal or private foundation funding. Dr. Wassum has been affiliated with the TNDA T32 since its inception, including receiving funding as a postdoc in 2010 and mentoring 7 TNDA trainees. She teaches a grant-writing course for the TNDA and graduate and undergraduate courses on motivation and addiction. Dr. Wassum is committed to inclusive mentoring practices. She educates herself on the historic and current systemic racism faced by marginalized and minoritized groups in our country and what she can do to oppose this both at the individual level with trainees and in her roles more broadly, including as co-director of the T32.
Lara Ray, PhD. Dr. Ray’s laboratory seeks to develop novel and more effective treatments for addiction, with a focus on medication development and experimental medicine approaches. Her lab takes a translational approach combining experimental psychopathology, pharmacology, and neuroimaging. Dr. Ray’s laboratory is currently investigating neuroimmune treatments for alcohol use disorder as well as designing translational studies that test neuroscience-informed hypotheses in clinical samples with addiction. Dr. Ray has a long track record of mentoring 15 PhD students and 6 postdoctoral fellows. Dr. Ray has received a NIAAA K24 award support her mentoring efforts, with a focus on mentoring trainees from minoritized backgrounds, including 7 addiction research faculty positions. In 2019, Dr. Ray received a mentoring award from the Psychology Graduate Student Association (PGSA). Dr. Ray has been actively involved with the TNDA since 2010, including supportive roles (e.g., executive committee, diversity committee, lecture organizer, guest speaker host), in addition to her active mentoring role (10 TNDA trainees to date). Dr. Ray is a Latina scholar with a robust portfolio of diversity, equity, and inclusion activities over the span of 15 years. These activities include many years of services in diversity committees at UCLA and at academic societies. Dr. Ray combines local and national-level knowledge of leadership, addiction science, and DEI initiatives.
Administrators:
TBD, Administrative coordinator
Katherine Fang, Financial Manager
Executive Committee:
Ziva Cooper, Ph.D. (Associate Professor in Psychiatry and Anesthesiology Depts, Director UCLA Cannabis Research Initiative and). She researches variables that influence both the therapeutic potential and adverse effects of cannabis and cannabinoids through double-blind, placebo-controlled studies.
Gina Poe Ph.D. (Professor IBP Dept) is director of Maximizing Access to Research Careers U*STAR Program, Center for Opportunities to Maximize Participation, Access, and Student Success Diversity program, HHMI Pathways, the BRI Summer Undergraduate Research Experience, and University of California-HBCU summer research partnership. The Poe lab investigates the mechanisms by which sleep traits serve learning and memory consolidation and how sleep disruption, including that corresponding to drug misuse, can influence learning and memory.
David Krantz Ph.D./M.D. (Professor Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences) is affiliated with the UCLA MSTP. The Kranz lab uses Drosophila to study how changes, including induced by drug exposure, in the function of neurotransmitter transporters influences synaptic transmission and behavior.
In addition, Dr. Edythe London and Dr. Steven Shoptaw are “ex officio” members, who serve on a consulting basis. Dr. London is the former director of the TNDA and will provide continuity and support. Dr. Shoptaw is Director of the Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine.
Diversity & Inclusion Committee:
Alicia Izquierdo, Ph.D.
Gina Poe, Ph.D.
Tama Hasson, Ph.D.
Theodore Freidman, Ph.D./M.D.
Cynthia Crawford, Ph.D.
External Advisory Committee:
J. David Jentsch, Ph.D. is a Research Professor, and the Empire Innovation Professor of Psychology at SUNY Binghamton University. Dr. Jentsch employs a diverse array of technical approaches, ranging from genomics to cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging and psychopharmacology, to explore the biological influences on motivation, reward, decision making and memory function in mice, rats, monkeys and human subjects. Before moving to SUNY-Binghamton from UCLA, he was a member of the executive committees of T32 training programs in behavioral neuroscience and the neuroscience of drug addiction (i.e., TNDA), and served as the Co-Director of the TNDA program from 2013-2015. In this role, he created and delivered training in ethics of research and career development to all the trainees, and was a primary mentor to a subset of trainees that worked in his laboratory or those of his collaborators. His trainees (9 PhD students in UCLA’s Psychology Department and more than a dozen postdoctoral fellows), as well as trainees at Binghamton University, have all been involved in multidisciplinary work, using a complex array of methods and subject populations, and all have been successful in receiving individual F31 training grants. Two of his former students are faculty members and one founded an addiction treatment center. Dr. Jentsch is co- director of Binghamton University’s T32 program on Developmental Neuroadaptations in Alcohol and Addictions.
Mary Kay Lobo, Ph.D. is a Professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Lobo’s research focuses on the neural circuits that underlie addiction and mood disorders. Her work has identified key brain regions and circuits that are involved in addiction to drugs such as cocaine and alcohol, as well as depression and anxiety. She has also studied how stress and trauma can alter these circuits and contribute to addiction and mental illness. Dr. Lobo has received numerous awards and honors for her research, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and the Society for Neuroscience Jacob P. Waletzky Award for addiction research. Dr. Lobo has been recognized for her mentorship with several awards, including the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Life Sciences Teacher of the Year Award and Life Sciences Student Mentor Award. PhD students and Postdoctoral Fellows in her lab have received F31, F32, T32, or K99/R00 funding. Many of her trainees have gone on to successful careers in academia and industry. Two of her former trainees are currently in independent faculty positions. In addition to her research, Dr. Lobo is committed to promoting diversity and equity in science. Through her role as the former Director of Graduate Education for the UMSOM PhD Program in Neuroscience (PiN), she I oversaw education and career development for many trainees. In her current role as the Chair of the PiN Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Anti-Racism in Science (IDEAS) Committee, she working toward a culture of inclusivity and diverse perspectives in the scientific community. Dr. Lobo recently received the UMSOM Dean’s Faculty Award for Diversity and Inclusion.
Hedy Kober, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Psychology at Yale University. She is also appointed in the Cognitive Science and Neuroscience programs, and the Wu Tsai Neuroscience Institute, and the Director of Yale’s Clinical & Affective Neuroscience Lab. Dr. Kober’s research focuses on the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie self-control, emotion regulation, and decision making. She uses a combination of state-of-the-art behavioral, neuroimaging, and computational techniques to investigate these processes in both healthy individuals and clinical populations, including individuals with substance use disorders. She has received numerous awards for her research including the Helmsley Charitable
Trust Fellowship in Cross Disciplinary Science, an Early Career Investigator Award from the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, and a NIDA/NIAAA Early Career Investigator Award. Dr. Kober has a stellar record of mentoring. She was awarded the Outstanding Mentor Award from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Many of her pre and post-doctoral trainees have received awards and external funding for their research and have gone on to successful academic and medical careers.