Author Archive

Featured Postdoc: Lance Rappaport, Ph.D.

Featured Postdoc: Lance Rappaport, Ph.D.

By Elizabeth Long

Lance Rappaport, Ph.D. is a post-doctoral fellow at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics. He first became interested in the field of behavioral genetics while earning his undergraduate degree in psychology at New York University, where he also studied child and adolescent mental health in the Child Study Center. At NYU, he was exposed to faculty interested in child development and daily diary research, which fueled his interests in affect and research ...

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Featured Postdoc, Postdocs

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Featured Student: Chelsea Sawyers

Featured Student: Chelsea Sawyers

By Elizabeth Long

Chelsea Sawyers Rooney is a PhD student in Human and Molecular Genetics with a concentration in quantitative genetics. She has been interested broadly in the field of genetics since middle school, and became interested in psychology during high school. Naturally, these interests led her to double-major in psychology and genetics at Iowa State University. As an undergraduate, she worked in an evolutionary biology lab that studied the heritability of mating behaviors in painted turtles. ...

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Michael Neale, Ph.D. Recipient of VCU Distinguished Scholarship Award

Michael Neale, Ph.D. Recipient of VCU Distinguished Scholarship Award

By Elizabeth Long

Michael Neale, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry in the School of Medicine, received the Distinguished Scholarship Award. He has dedicated his research to making connections between how genetic, environmental and behavioral factors interact and contribute to illnesses such as substance abuse and psychiatric disorders.

Michael Neale created an open-source computer program widely used by researchers in modeling data to determine whether genetic variants are linked to outcome variables. The program has been ...

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Awards, Faculty, Featured

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Combining Structural Equation Modeling With Genomic Approaches

Combining Structural Equation Modeling With Genomic Approaches

By Elizabeth Long

Hermine Maes, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Human and Molecular Genetics. Her interest in the field began while she was finishing her undergraduate degree. She was interested in both the physiological and psychological sciences, but she could not decide between the two. Serendipitously, one day she was in the library doing research for her undergraduate thesis and a research professor engaged her about a research project looking at the role of genes and ...

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Faculty, Featured Faculty

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Featured Student: Ashlee Moore

Featured Student: Ashlee Moore

By Elizabeth Long

Ashlee Moore is a PhD student in the Psychiatric, Behavioral, and Statistical Genetics (PBSG) PhD program. Her first exposure to genetics was during a human genetics undergraduate course, where she became interested in the genetics of behavior. Accordingly, she majored in psychology with a minor in biology. As an undergraduate, she was awarded an undergraduate research grant to fund a research project that examined the relationship between polymorphisms in the COMT gene and ...

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Featured Postdoc: Christina Sheerin, Ph.D.

Featured Postdoc: Christina Sheerin, Ph.D.

By Elizabeth Long

Christina Sheerin, Ph.D. is a post-doctoral fellow at Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics. Her interests in trauma and its sequela began while she was completing her internship at the VA hospital while completing her PhD in clinical psychology. At the VA, she was first introduced and became quite interested in trauma, PTSD, and substance use disorders. Subsequently, she completed her clinical post-doctoral fellowship also at the VA, during which she worked with ...

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Understanding The Brain Mechanisms Involved in Alcohol Use and Misuse

Understanding The Brain Mechanisms Involved in Alcohol Use and Misuse

By Elizabeth Long

Vladimir Vladimirov, M.D., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. His interests in psychiatric genetics were sparked by the clinical and behavioral complexity of psychiatric disorders and by the overwhelming number of people suffering from them. Some of Dr. Vladimirov’s closest friends suffer from major depression, alcohol use disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Seeing them struggling on an everyday basis has motivated him to study these disorders on both clinical as ...

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Featured Student: Jessica Bourdon

Featured Student: Jessica Bourdon

By Elizabeth Long

Jessica Bourdon is a student in the Psychiatric, Behavioral, and Statistical Genetics (PBSG) PhD program. Her interest in psychiatric genetics began as an undergraduate student at the University of Richmond when she was exposed to the classic nature vs. nurture debate in her psychology classes. As an undergraduate, she also obtained research experience by working in a cognitive neuroscience lab that examined the nuances of visual expertise and perception. After subsequently working for ...

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Featured Student: Elizabeth Long

Featured Student: Elizabeth Long

By Elizabeth Long

Elizabeth Long is a student in the Psychiatric, Behavioral, and Statistical Genetics (PBSG) PhD program. Her interest in psychiatric genetics began as an undergraduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. While she has always been interested in psychology and individual differences, she became fascinated by the study of underlying biological influences on behavior when she took a class, “Drugs and Behavior.” Upon graduation, she obtained a full-time position as a research specialist working ...

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AYATS Seeks to Identify Risk for Internalizing Disorders

AYATS Seeks to Identify Risk for Internalizing Disorders

By Elizabeth Long

Roxann Roberson-Nay, Ph.D. is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. Her background is in clinical psychology and she came to be interested in psychiatric genetics while she was working as a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) under the mentorship of Dr. Daniel Pine. Her goal was to combine her clinical background with neuroimaging and genetics. Upon arrival at the VCU Virginia Treatment Center for Children in 2005, she ...

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