Dr. Abraham Palmer and Palmer Lab postdoc Zachary Tatom attended the 48th Annual Research Society on Alcohol (RSA) Scientific Meeting/ISBRA Congress in New Orleans, Louisiana from June 21-25, 2025.

Dr. Palmer served as Co-chair, Organizer, and Discussant for the Identifying Genes, Mechanisms and Therapeutic Targets for Alcohol Use Disorder: Progress From Forward and Reverse Genetics Symposium.

Zack presented a talk at the symposium titled “Anxiety Phenotype Components Predict Ethanol Consumption Magnitude and Progression in a Genetic Analysis with Diversity Outbred Mice.”

See the Photo Gallery for RSA 2025 photos!

Jaxon Leighty joined the Palmer Lab in June 2025 as part of the Research Experiences for High School and Undergraduate Students (REHU) summer program through our P30 Center. He is a high school senior at SET High School and plans to pursue a career in molecular biology.

Welcome, Jaxon!

Mohammad joined the Palmer Lab in June 2025 as a laboratory/animal assistant. His research interest is in the gut-brain axis.

Welcome, Mohammad!

Palmer Lab member and UC San Diego Bioinformatics and Systems Biology graduate student Jean Gonzalez presented research titled “Subjective Response to Opioids Predicts Risk for Opioid Use Disorder” at the 20th Annual Lewis L. Judd Young Investigators Research Symposium on June 12, 2025.

The manuscript titled “Genomic structural equation study reveals links between anorexia nervosa and delay discounting and lack of perseverance but not other facets of impulsivity” was accepted in Frontiers in Psychiatry.

The manuscript titled “The pleiotropic architecture of human impulsivity across biological scales” was accepted in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Yixuan (Ivy) Xin joined the Palmer Lab in May 2025 as part of the Research Experiences for High School and Undergraduate Students (REHU) summer program.

Ivy is an undergraduate at UC San Diego with research interests in machine learning, sleep, mental disorders, and substance use disorders.

Welcome, Ivy!

The manuscript titled “Investigating the Role of Glyoxalase 1 as a Therapeutic Target for Cocaine and Oxycodone Use Disorder” was accepted in Pharmacology Biochemistry & Behavior.

Brittany gave a talk titled “Getting the runaround: is the locomotor response to a novel environment a model of human externalizing behavior?” for the 18th Annual Genetics Training Program Retreat at UC San Diego on May 23, 2025.

The paper titled “Genome-Wide Association Study of Age-Related Hearing Loss in CFW Mice Identifies Multiple Genes and Loci, Including Prkag2” was published in the Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology (JARO) and was authored by members of the Palmer Lab in collaboration with Dr. Rick Friedman’s group.

Authors include current Palmer Lab members Oksana Polesskaya, Riyan Cheng, Thiago Missfeldt Sanches, and Abraham Palmer.

Congratulations!