Marc Kealhofer, Graduate Student at the Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, is a Poster Presentation Finalists in the 2023 Early Career Investigator Program Award from the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics for his abstract “Dissecting the Relationship Between Major Depressive Disorder and Cognition Using Genetics.“
Continue reading →Severine Lannoy, PhD, receives the 2023 Early Career Investigator Program Award from the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics as a post-doctoral researcher for her abstract “The Roles of Aggregate Genetic Liability and Early Adversity in Risk for Suicidal Thought and Behavior.“
Continue reading →Mallory Stephenson, Graduate Student at the Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, is a Poster Presentation Finalists at the IASR/AFSP 2023 International Summit on Suicide Research for her abstract “Clarifying the Relationship Between Painful and Provocative Events and Risk for Suicide Attempt in a Swedish National Sample.“
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Kenneth Kendler, M.D., doesn’t love attention — he says he finds it “a little embarrassing.” But as a world-renowned researcher from his pioneering studies in psychiatric genetics, the Virginia Commonwealth University professor has continued to rake in the accolades throughout his decades-long career. The latest speaks to his legacy.
Kendler has long been among the top five most-cited researchers in the field, and in September 2023, he achieved the No. 1 lifetime ranking from ScholarGPS, which analyzes researchers and their publications ...
Continue reading →Eva Lancaster is a post-doctoral fellow at VIPBG and an alumnus of the Quantitative Human Genetics PhD program at the VCU School of Medicine. She received her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Mary Washington. During her time in graduate school, Eva worked in the labs of Drs. Roxann Roberson-Nay and Timothy York. Her dissertation concentrated on bolstering the interpretability and underlying methodology of DNA methylation studies, and she ...
Continue reading →Drs. Ananda Amstadter (VCU) and Abigail Lott (Emory) were recently funded to study models of comorbidity between alcohol use disorder (AUD) and post traumatic stress disorder (GTP) through a new NIAAA R01 (AA030549). They are joined by Co-Is from VCU (Drs. Sheerin and Bacanu), Emory (Drs. Micholopous, Ressler), SUNY (Dr. Peterson), and University of Windsor (Dr. Rappaport). AUD and PTSD commonly co-occur.
Directional models of comorbidity exist, self-medication ...
Continue reading →Madhurbain Singh, from the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, received The 2nd Rising Star Award at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Behavior Genetics Association for his oral presentation “Harnessing the Genetic Diversity in the UK Biobank to Enhance Genomic Discovery.“
Continue reading →Drs.Elizabeth Prom-Wormley and Hermine Maes recently received funding for their Resist! Project (R01 DA054313). The goal of this project is to index individual resistance to psychoactive substance use (SU) during adolescence and use the indices to identify factors influencing resistance into early middle adulthood, with a special focus on potentially modifiable factors.
We will also use a concept mapping approach to identify novel factors and a genetically-informed study design to account for genetic confounding. This project addresses ...
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Mallory is a third-year doctoral candidate in the Integrative Life Sciences – Behavioral & Statistical Genetics program at VIPBG. She works in the lab of Dr. Alexis Edwards, whose research focuses on the genetic aspects of internalizing and substance use disorders. Mallory traces her love of science back to her grade school days in the Roanoke Valley of Virginia, where she attended a science and technology-focused magnet school. She was involved in both psychology ...
Continue reading →The Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics pre- and post-doc awards were announced on December 15, 2022. This year, the awardees include Mohammad Ahangari, who received the Kenneth S. Kendler Award for Excellence in Pre-Doctoral Research, and Severine Lannoy, Ph.D., who accepted the Lindon Eaves Post-Doctoral Award. Mr. Ahangari has been working with Brien Riley, Ph.D., and Dr. Lannoy has been working with Alexis Edwards, Ph.D.
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