Panel Discussion on Advancing Animal-Human Translational Science (TIPS 2018)

This panel discussion was part of the 2018 Technology in Psychiatry Summit, an event sponsored by the McLean Institute for Technology in Psychiatry, which occurred November 1-2, 2018 at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.

Panelists

Bill Carlezon, PhD, is the chief of the Jerry and Phyllis Rappaport Center of Excellence in Basic Neuroscience Research and director of the Behavioral Genetics Laboratory at McLean Hospital. Dr. Carlezon is primarily interested in the biological basis and treatment of psychiatric illness, specifically nature/nurture issues as they relate to the brain and the basic processes by which the brain develops and is modified in response to experience. He has won numerous awards for his research, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (George W. Bush), the Waletzky Award for Innovative Research in Drug Addiction and Alcoholism (Society for Neuroscience), and serves as editor-in-chief of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

Sandeep “Bob” Datta, MD, PhD, is an associate professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. His lab focuses on understanding how sensory cues—particularly odors—are detected by the nervous system, and how the brain transforms information about the presence of salient sensory cues into patterns of motivated action. Dr. Datta has received the prestigious NIH New Innovator Award, the Burroughs Welcome Career Award in the Medical Sciences, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Searle Scholars Award, the Vallee Young Investigator Award, and the McKnight Endowment Fund Scholar Award, and has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Science/Kavli Scholars program

Rogier Landman, PhD, is group leader at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute and an affiliate with MIT, with Dr. Guoping Feng. He is passionate about the prospect of transgenic primate models for human disorders, with an emphasis on social behavior. His current work involves automated behavioral monitoring and analysis of macaque and marmoset monkeys with Shank3 gene mutations which, in humans, are associated with autism.

Cameron Good, PhD, is a physical scientist at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory located at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, where his lab performs behavioral physiology experiments utilizing optogenetic techniques to study REM sleep mechanisms. He was awarded a LUCI Fellowship from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering to develop fully implantable, biocompatible neural devices to study brain disorders. He also serves as a visiting scientist at the Medical Research Institute for Chemical Defense (MRICD), where he works to discover novel medical countermeasures for nerve agent exposure. Previously, he was at NIH/NIDA, where he built a successful optogenetic neuroscience research program to dissect the role of brainstem reward circuitry that plays a role in the aversive components of abstinence or withdrawal from addictive substances.

Elizabeth Phelps, PhD, is the Pershing Square Professor of Human Neuroscience at Harvard University. She received her PhD from Princeton University and served on the faculty of Yale University and New York University. Her laboratory has earned widespread acclaim for its groundbreaking research on how the human brain processes emotion, particularly as it relates to learning, memory and decision making. Dr. Phelps is the recipient of the 21st Century Scientist Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society and the William James Award from the Association for Psychological Science. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Experimental Psychology and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Neuroeconomics and was a founding board member of the Society for Neuroethics.

Please visit mclean.org/itp to learn more about the McLean Institute for Technology in Psychiatry.