Five early-career researchers from UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior have been selected to receive 2015 Friends Scholars Awards. Each recipient will receive $100,000 over two years to support their research. They were selected from an applicant field of 27 junior faculty and postdoctoral fellows.
The recipients and their research projects are:
Eliza Congdon, assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and a researcher at the UCLA Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics, for “Identifying, replicating, and validating peripheral gene expression profiles of fast-acting treatment in major depressive disorders.”
Michelle Rozenman, a clinical psychologist and health sciences clinical instructor in the department of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences, for “Translational intervention to directly target and change cognitive biases underlying pediatric anxiety.”
Dr. Yvonne Yang, fellow with the VA Mental Illness Research and Clinical Center and a co-investigator with UCLA faculty on the neurobiology of psychosis, will receive the Chancellor Gene Block Friends Scholar Award for “Improving cognition and negative symptoms in schizophrenia with N-Acetylcysteine.”
Nanthia Suthana, assistant professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral science and neurosurgery, will receive the Joseph Drown Friends Scholar Award, for “Neuromodulation and neuroimaging to enhance cognitive function in patients affected with disorders of memory.”
April Thames, assistant professor-in-residence in the department of psychiatry and biobehavioral science, will receive the Morris A. Hazan Friends Scholar Award for “Identifying resiliency and psychosocial factors that protect individuals against adversity.”
For more information, visit this Friends of the Semel webpage.
