Research Faculty
Nancy E Adler, PhD Research Areas:
Socioeconomic influences on health, reproductive health and population health
Jennifer Alvidrez, PhD Research Areas:
access to mental health and drug treatment services by ethnic minority, elderly, and dual-diagnosis populations; minority mental health, mental health stigma
Patricia A. Arean, PhD Research Areas:
efficacy/effectiveness of psychotherapy in later life, increasing access to mental health services in, low-income and minority elderly
Deborah Barnes, PhD Research Areas:
Identification of factors that may protect against dementia and other geriatric neuropsychiatric disorders.
Heather Burke, PhD Research Areas:
Currently recruiting depressed women for research study on stress and depression (http://www.sadstudy.org); Research interests include depression, cytokines, and inflammation
William Byerley, MD Research Areas:
Molecular genetic studies of schizophrenia and Manic Depressive Disorder
Ben Cheyette, MD, PhD Research Areas:
wnt signaling and behavior, wnt signaling and brain development, intercellular signaling in brain function and molecular components of psychiatric disorders
Kevin L. Delucchi, PhD Research Areas:
statistics, drug abuse, alcohol, clinical trials
James W. Dilley, MD Research Areas:
For the past 20 years, I have had a professional interest in the mental health aspects of the HIV epidemic. I have been interested both in understanding the mental health consequences of HIV infection as well as in bringing a mental health perspective to the critical task of preventing the sexual transmission of HIV. In addition, as an administrator and the Director of the UCSF AIDS Health Project, the largest HIV and mental health services organization in San Francisco, I have an ongoing interest in service delivery and program evaluation. To those ends, I have pursued several research activities in each of these areas (see above).
Allison J. Doupe, MD, PhD Research Areas:
Laura Dunn, MD Research Areas:
Geriatric psychiatry, empirical ethics, research ethics, bioethics, decision making, capacity, competency, informed consent, psychooncology, schizophrenia, dementia, residency education, medical education
Stuart J. Eisendrath, MD Research Areas:
depression and factitious disorders
Elissa S. Epel, PhD Research Areas:
cell aging, psychoneuroendocrinology, stress and coping, insulin resistant syndrome (aka Metabolic Syndrome)
Judith Ford, PhD Research Areas:
brain imaging (fMRI and EEG) in schizophrenia
Evan Goulding, PhD Research Areas:
mouse models of affective and addictive disorders, analysis of patterns of behavior in freely acting animals, visualization and analysis of complex behavioral patterns and large data sets, interested in developing systems of collection of behavioral data in humans in natural environments
Sharon M. Hall, PhD Research Areas:
behavioral and pharmacological treatment of substance abuse
Steven P. Hamilton, MD, PhD Research Areas:
psychiatric genetics, pharmacogenomics and genomics
Mardi J. Horowitz, MD Research Areas:
impact of stress, loss, character structure and change processes in psychotherapy
Gary Humfleet, PhD Research Areas:
substance abuse treatment with emphasis on nicotine dependence, LGBT health issues, HIV, substance abuse treatment, clinical trials methology, internet-based interventions
Reese T. Jones, MD Research Areas:
Nick Kanas, MD Research Areas:
For more than 30 years, Dr. Kanas has studied the psychological interactions of people under stress and ways they can cope better with stressors in their environment. His earlier work involved groups of veteran patients suffering from alcoholism, PTSD, and schizophrenia. For over 12 years, he has studied astronauts living and working in space. He has been the Principal Investigator of two large NASA-funded international studies involving the Mir and International Space Stations, and he currently is the Principal Investigator of a NASA-funded study aimed at training astronauts to deal with psychological stressors in space. In 1999, Dr. Kanas received the Aerospace Medical Association Raymond F. Longacre Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in the Psychological and Psychiatric Aspects of Aerospace Medicine. In 2003, Dr. Kanas received the J. Elliott Royer Award for excellence in Academic Psychiatry. Dr. Kanas is the co-author of a book entitled Space Psychology and Psychiatry, which was the recipient of the 2004 International Academy of Astronautics Life Sciences Book Award.
Margaret Kemeny, PhD Research Areas:
psychoneuroimmunology; relationship between psychological factors, neurophysiological mechanisms and disease processes, particularly in HIV-1 and inflammatory diseases; effects of cognitive representations on emotion, physiology and health; threats to social status and their effects on cognitive representations of the self and self-conscious emotions including shame, as well as the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis and the cytokine network, particularly pro-inflammatory cytokines and cognitive representations of future health and their physiological correlates and health consequences; the role of expectancies in the effects of placebos on inflammatory processes
Alicia F. Lieberman, PhD Research Areas:
mental health problems and traumatic stress responses in infancy and early childhood; attachment disorders, parenting problems in the birth-to-five age range, treatment outcome research to close the gap in evidence-based treatment for minority young children and their families
Rachel Loewy, PhD Research Areas:
Schizophrenia; prodromal psychosis; recent-onset psychosis; transitional age youth; clinical assessment; community partnerships
Scott Mackin, PhD Research Areas:
The assessment of cognitive functioning pre and post treatment; identifying cognitive phenotypes of psychiatric disorders; identifying neuropsychiatric symptoms of underlying neurodegenerative disease in older adults; evaluating the ipact of cognitive impairment and depression on functional status; training on the use and interpretation of cognitive screening tools
Charles Marmar, MD Research Areas:
Carmen L. Masson, PhD Research Areas:
drug abuse and HIV prevention, health services research and nicotine dependence
Daniel Mathalon, PhD, MD Research Areas:
Functional MRI and EEG/event-related potential studies of schizophrenia, including prodromal period prior to illness onset. Focus on neural correlates of sensory, perceptual, cognitive and clinical symptoms of psychosis.
Carol A. Mathews, MD Research Areas:
psychiatric genetics, epidemiology and etiology of OCD and related neuropsychiatric disorders, phenotype-genotype correlations, and phenomenology
Keith McBurnett, PhD Research Areas:
hormonal factors in disruptive behavior disorders, developmental psychopathology, classification and treatment outcome
Elinore McCance-Katz, MD, PhD Research Areas:
Drug/alcohol abuse, clinical pharmacology, drug interactions, human laboratory studies, clinical trials
Ricardo F. Muñoz, PhD Research Areas:
depression prevention trials in pregnancy and postpartum; evaluating clinical interventions via mail, the web, and other innovative formats; research with Spanish-speaking populations; smoking cessation trials; evidence-based Web interventions
Thomas C. Neylan, MD Research Areas:
PTSD neurobiology and treatment research, sleep-wake physiology, daytime fatigue and performance, neuroendocrinology, gene microarray, brain imaging, and Phase II & III clinical trials.
Linda J. Pfiffner, PhD Research Areas:
treatment outcome for ADHD and related disruptive behavior problems, development of integrated home-school interventions for ADHD-Inattentive Type and the role of family factors in developmental models of child psychopathology
Jodi J. Prochaska, PhD, MPH Research Areas:
tobacco dependence treatment among the mentally ill, psychiatry residency training, physical activity and nutrition interventions, interactive communication technology for behavior change
Victor I. Reus, MD Research Areas:
behavioral endocrinology, particularly endocrine effects of stress and behavioral effects of CRF, ACTH and glucocorticoids, genetics of bipolar mood disorder, genetics of Tourette Disorder; pharmacogenetics and psychopharmacology
S. Craig Risch, MD Research Areas:
treatment refractory mood disorders and psychoses; multicenter psychopharm clinical trials; investigator initiated psychopharm clinical
Demian Rose, MD, PhD Research Areas:
Early psychosis, clinical outcome measures, psychotherapy for psychosis
Abram Rosenblatt, PhD Research Areas:
children’s mental health services research, juvenile justice and children’s mental health and public policy research and children’s service systems
John L.R. Rubenstein, MD, PhD Research Areas:
development of the forebrain
Derek D. Satre, PhD Research Areas:
alcohol and drug treatment services research, treatment access, effects of drinking on health, psychotherapy, psychiatric comorbidity
Martha Shumway, PhD Research Areas:
Mental health services research, measurement, preference/utility assessment, cost-effectiveness analysis, schizophrenia, research design, data analysis, mixed methods research, cognition, trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder, co-occuring conditions, psychiatric and medical emergency services, involuntary treatment, public sector care, underserved populations
James L. Sorensen, PhD Research Areas:
substance abuse & mental health, prevention and treatment of AIDS and other infectious diseases
Laurence H. Tecott, MD, PhD Research Areas:
molecular genetics of serotonin system regulation of behavior
Jeanne M. Tschann, PhD Research Areas:
family relationships and adolescent functioning, relationship dynamics and condom use among Latino adolescents, obesity among Mexican American children, research with Latino populations
Janice Y. Tsoh, PhD Research Areas:
nicotine dependence treatment in special populations, co-occurring mental and substance use disorders
Sophia Vinogradov, MD Research Areas:
Dr. Vinogradov directs a translational clinical neuroscience laboratory that focuses on cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia. In collaboration with basic neuroscientist, Michael Merzenich, Ph.D., she studies neuroscience-guided computerized cognitive training exercises for patients with schizophrenia that aim to drive enduring plastic changes in cortical processing. Dr. Vinogradov uses MEG and fMRI methods to probe the brain changes in both early sensory processing and higher-order cognitive operations in subjects who undergo this cognitive training. She is also examining changes in serum biomarkers (BDNF, D-serine) as a response to training. More recently, Dr. Vinogradov has begun to apply these methods to the study of adolescents who are prodromal for schizophrenia and young adults in early psychosis, with the goal of delaying or preventing the onset of a deteriorating psychiatric illness.
Susan M. Voglmaier, MD, PhD Research Areas:
cellular and olecular neurobiology, vesicle trafficking and neurotransmitter release
Mark von Zastrow, MD, PhD Research Areas:
cellular neurobiology, psychopharmacology and drug abuse
Angela E. Waldrop, PhD Research Areas:
PTSD, substance use disorders, risk behaviors including HIV risk
Constance M. Weisner, DrPH, MSW Research Areas:
alcohol and drug epidemiology, access and utilization, treatment outcome and cost effectiveness
Lauren Weiss, PhD Research Areas:
At UCSF, Dr. Weiss will direct a research laboratory that investigates the genetic mechanisms controlling neuropsychiatric disorders, such as autism spectrum disorders. Her long-term goal is the genetic and molecular dissection of the social and communication deficits underlying autism in order to improve understanding, prediction, and treatment.
Owen M. Wolkowitz, MD Research Areas:
Psychoneuroendocrinology, particularly effects of stress and stress hormones on the brain (glucocorticoids, neurosteroids, neurotropic factors), psychopharmacology of depression and anxiety