Dr. Abraham Palmer has been appointed as Vice Chair for Basic Research in the Department of Psychiatry. In this role, he will coordinate department research efforts, support fellow faculty and student researchers, and organize regular departmental research events. He will work closely with Dr. Murray Stein, MD, the Vice Chair for Clinical Research in Psychiatry.
Katherine McMurray defended her thesis, “Methylglyoxal & Glyoxalase 1 (GLO1) in Psychiatric Disorders: Insights into possible treatments”, this month and it was approved by her committee. Congratulations, Kat!
In December, she will join Dr. Renu Sah’s lab as a post-doctoral scholar. Dr. Sah is in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati. Her lab studies the pathophysiology of anxiety disorders and hopes to identify novel biomarkers and improved therapeutic options.
Sandra Sanchez has accepted a post-doc position and will join the Palmer Lab in Winter 2016! She is currently a Visitor Researcher at the University of Sussex (United Kingdom) and recently received her PhD in Dai Stephens’ lab there. Her research focuses on the effects of alcohol withdrawal on impulsivity traits in mice and humans. Welcome, Sandra!
After a decade of perpetual Chicago winter, the Palmer Lab is moving to sunny California!
Dr. Palmer will join the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California – San Diego on January 1, 2016.
The Palmer Lab will be moving to UCSD’s brand-new Biomedical Research Facility II. Check out some nice visuals and more information about its construction here and here!
The Palmer Lab had a big showing at the Rat Genetics and Genomics for Psychiatric Disorders and Addiction workshop on June 29th: Katherine McMurray, Alex Gileta, and Yu-yu Ren presented their work and all won “Best Poster” awards. Congratulations, you three!
Kayla Chase has accepted a joint post-doc position and will join both the Palmer and Lieb Labs in Summer 2015!
Apurva Chitre has joined the Palmer Lab! She recently completed her M.S. in Bioinformatics at Johns Hopkins University. While there, she also worked as a data analyst and research coordinator for multiple large-scale studies investigating the genetic basis of various respiratory and cardiovascular diseases in humans. She brings her computational skills and experience with handling large sequencing data to the Palmer Lab. Welcome Apurva!
Dr. Oksana Polesskaya is the new Scientific Coordinator for the NIDA Center for GWAS in Outbred Rats! The Scientific Coordinator is a crucial part of the Administrative Core, which is based at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Polesskaya obtained her PhD from Lomonosov Moscow State University in Moscow, Russia, followed by a post-doc at George Mason University where she studied drug abuse in rats. She then moved to the field of HIV/AIDS and completed another post-doc at the University of Rochester and became a Research Assistant Professor. There, she worked on
