By Nicholas Roznovsky
Fourth-year UC San Francisco psychiatry residents Christopher Bartley, MD, PhD, and Kristen Berendzen, MD, PhD, have both been selected as recipients of the 2019 A.P. Giannini Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and Career Development Award. The highly competitive program provides up to three years of funding for research training and career development programs for physician-scientists and junior researchers with less than three years of postdoctoral research experience.
Since its inception, the A.P. Giannini Foundation has awarded over 900 fellowships to postdoctoral biomedical researchers sponsored by California’s accredited medical schools. The Fellowship and Career Development Award Program supports innovative research in the basic sciences and applied fields and trains fellows to become established investigators and to pursue scientific leadership positions in academia, industry, public and non-traditional career pathways. Recipients' research work is aimed at advancing the translation of biomedical science into treatments, preventions, and cures for human diseases.
Bartley also named UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow
In addition, Bartley has been awarded a fellowship by the UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, which was established in 1984 to encourage outstanding women and minority PhD recipients to pursue academic careers at the University of California. The current program offers postdoctoral research fellowships, professional development, and faculty mentoring to outstanding scholars in all fields whose research, teaching, and service will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity at UC. Bartley will continue his work on autoantibody discovery in neuropsychiatric behavioral syndromes with mentors Samuel Pleasure, MD, PhD, and Michael R. Wilson, MD.
Berendzen's research work focuses on the genetic, molecular, and neural circuit basis of social stress responses. She is mentored by Devanand Manoli, MD, PhD.
About UCSF Psychiatry
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry, UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital, and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service.
UCSF Psychiatry conducts its clinical, educational and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including UCSF campuses at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay and Laurel Heights, UCSF Medical Center, UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, the San Francisco VA Health Care System, and UCSF Fresno.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, translational and population sciences; and a preeminent biomedical research enterprise.
It also includes UCSF Health, which comprises three top-ranked hospitals – UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland – as well as Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital, UCSF Benioff Children’s Physicians, and the UCSF Faculty Practice. UCSF Health has affiliations with hospitals and health organizations throughout the Bay Area. UCSF faculty also provide all physician care at the public Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, and the San Francisco VA Medical Center. The UCSF Fresno Medical Education Program is a major branch of the University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine.
