Dr. Oksana Polesskaya joins the Palmer Lab!

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 the neuropathology of HIV-1 infection in mouse models in the Dewhurst Lab, with particular emphasis on the etiology of cognitive deficits in AIDS patients and the effects of short- and long-term methamphetamine exposure when coupled with HIV virotoxin.