Core Members

These are faculty recruited and/or directly supported by BHI grants.

We currently have several ongoing recruitments- the Director of Rutgers Addiction Research Center and the Greg Brown Endowed Chair, Krieger-Klein Endowed Chair in Neurodegeneration Research, an Assistant Professor in Human Brain Imaging Research and Motivational & Affective Neuroscience. All these new neuroscience faculty will join BHI as Core Investigators.

Gary Aston-Jones, PhD
Director, Brain Health Institute
Murray and Charlotte Strongwater Endowed Chair in Neuroscience and Brain Health
- Gary Aston-Jones Lab
- Research Programs

Robin L. Davis, PhD
Associate Director, Brain Health Institute

Website

Wayne W. Fisher, PhD, BCBA-D
Henry Rutgers Endowed Professor of Pediatrics, RWJMS, Director of Rutgers Center for Autism Research, Education and Services (RUCARES), Director of CSH-RUCARES and the Severely Affected Behavior Disorders in Children Program at CSH.

Luciano D'Adamio, MD, PhD
Herbert and Jacqueline Klein Endowed Chair in Alzheimer's Disease and Neurodegeneration Research, Associate Director of BHI for Alzheimer’s Disease and Neurodegeneration Research. Professor of Pharmacology, Physiology & Neuroscience, Professor of Neurology at NJMS. Website

David H. Zald, PhD
Henry Rutgers Term Chair, Professor of Psychiatry, RWJMS, Director of Center for Advance Human Brain Imaging Research (CAHBIR). Website

Detlev Boison, PhD
Vice Chair of Research and Training, Dept. of Neurosurgery
Professor, Dept. of Neurosurgery, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Professor, Dept. of Neurosurgery, New Jersey Medical School. Website

Cathleen Piazza, PhD
Professor, Dept. of Applied Psychology, Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Director of Pediatric Feeding Disorders Program, Children's Specialized Hospital.

R. Christopher Pierce, PhD
Professor, Dept. of Psychiatry, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Assistant Director for Education and Training in BHI.
Dr. Pierce's lab is dedicated to identifying the neuronal substrates underlying cocaine craving and addiction. Lab Website.

Ying-Xian Pan, MD, PhD
Professor, Dept. of Anesthesiology, New Jersey Medical School.
Dr. Pan studies the mechanisms of opioid actions, providing the foundation of developing novel drugs for pain treatment. The goal of his research is to understand the mechanisms and functions of mu opioid receptor gene for developing novel drugs to control pain and substance use disorders. Link to Dr. Pan's personal page and lab websites.

Mi-Hyeon Jang, PhD
Associate Professor, Dept. of Neruosurgery, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
Dr. Jang conducts studies to identify potential mechanisms that can prevent cognitive dysfunction in neurological, neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, with a goal of developing effective regenerative therapies to treat these dysfunctions.

Yong Kim, PhD
Associate Professor, Dept. of Neruosurgery, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
Dr. Kim is interested in molecular and cellular compensatory mechanisms by which the brain maintains cellular homeostasis or repair in response to risk factors of neurodegenerative diseases or psychiatric disorders.

Hyung Jin Ahn, PhD
Assistant Professor, NJMS- Department of Pharmacology, Physiology & Neuroscience. Hyung Jin's lab studies molecular mechanisms underlying cerebrovascular deficits in Alzheimer's Disease (AD), investigating cerebrovascular dysfunction and blood-brain barrier damage in rodent AD models and postmortem specimens of AD patients. Lab Website

David J. Barker, PhD
Assistant Professor, RU-NB-SAS- Department of Psychology. David is interested in cutting edge technologies to interrogate neural circuits involved in psychiatric disorders with a goal of better understanding the maladaptive processes that affect the brains of individuals afflicted with drug addiction and comorbid mental disorders. Lab Website .

Miriam Bocarsly , PhD
Assistant Professor, NJMS- Department of Pharmacology, Physiology & Neuroscience. Miriam’s lab uses a multidisciplinary approach to understand the neural circuitry regulating feeding and motivated behaviors. She is particularly interested in understanding how these mechanisms are affected in disease states, such as obesity. Lab Website .

Ioana Carcea, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor, NJMS- Department of Pharmacology, Physiology & Neuroscience. Ioana is interested in how mammals process social information, and the neuronal mechanisms by which this information impacts brain states, neuronal plasticity and behavior. Lab Website.

Brian Greer, PhD, BCBA-D
Assistant Professor, RWJMS- Department of Pediatrics, Assistant Director CSH-RUCARES. Oversees the Severe Behavior Disorders in Children Program.

Morgan H. James, PhD
Assistant Professor, RWJMS- Department of Psychiatry. Morgan is interested in understanding the neural basis of psychiatric illnesses to help develop effective treatments. His lab is interested in studying illnesses characterized by aberrant motivation, including substance use disorders, depression, and eating disorders. Lab Website.

Anna Konova, PhD
Assistant Professor, UBHC/RWJMS- Department of Psychiatry. My primary research areas of interest are decision neuroscience and computational psychiatry. This work combines fMRI, computational modeling, and patient populations to address questions related to how we construct value and how value is modulated by subjective states and drug addiction. Lab Website.

Todd Mowery, PhD
Assistant Professor, BHI/RWJMS- Department of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery. My research program investigates how early auditory and visual experience influences the development of the cortico- and thalamostriatal circuits that govern perceptual action selection. We explore how abnormal developmental experience can impair striatally-mediated learning.

Mark A. Rossi, PhD
Assistant Professor, BHI/RWJMS- Department of Psychiatry and Child Health Institute of NJ. The Rossi lab uses in vivo two-photon calcium imaging, electrophysiology, and genetic methods to probe how distributed brain circuits regulate feeding, motivated behavior, and obesity.
Lab Website.

Alexander Kusnecov, PhD

Professor, SAS- Department of Psychology.

Faculty

Core Members