News

Carla Wall, PhD, a postdoctoral associate and an alumna of the Duke Psychiatry Clinical Psychology Doctoral Internship, was selected as one of two 2022 Outstanding Postdocs at Duke. She was nominated by her faculty mentor, Jill Howard, PhD, as well as other research team members.

The $3.5 million award will adapt a cell-linker protein in humans that improves crosstalk between brain regions in hopes of rewiring circuits that go awry in psychiatric disorders. The NIH has recognized Dzirasa as one of just eight scholars for the 2022 Director’s Pioneer Award, which specifically funds promising and often paradigm-shifting projects by exceptional researchers.

Several Duke experts, including Jane Gagliardi, MD, MHS, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, share some strategies for balancing ambitions with available time and energy.

Duke’s Internal Medicine-Psychiatry (Med-Psych) program had a strong showing at the 2022 Association of Medicine and Psychiatry (AMP) Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA, on September 29 to October 1.

Published in Nature, this research in animal models show it’s possible to create a compound that hits the same exact target as psychedelic drugs hit – the 5-HT2A serotonin receptors on the surface of specific neurons – but does not cause the same psychedelic effects when given to mice. Duke Psychiatry's William Wetsel, PhD, was a senior author on the paper.

Duke Psychiatry's Bryan Sexton, PhD, led a study involving more than 30,000 health care workers to track the emotional impact of the pandemic. The researchers found increases in emotional exhaustion from about 32% in 2019, before COVID hit, to 40% by January 2022. The study was published in JAMA Network Open on Sept. 21.

Joseph McClernon, PhD, Co-Director of the CTSI’s Integration and Strategic Partnerships Pillar, has been named the Interim Co-Director for the Duke CTSA Team Science Core. Dr. McClernon is a professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

The Office for Research & Innovation has awarded funding to eight, interdisciplinary projects as part of the inaugural Duke Science and Technology (DST) Launch Seed Grant Program. Duke Psychiatry assistant professor Yun Wang, PhD, was among the awardees.

Since 2020, the Developing Best Practices for Trauma-Informed Teaching and Learning project team, led by team leaders Jan Holton, PhD, and Warren Kinghorn, MD, DTh, and project manager Stephanie Hargrove, PhD, has been exploring the ways that trauma impacts students’ experiences in higher education.

The Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development has been awarded a $12 million federal grant to develop artificial intelligence tools for detecting autism during infancy and identifying brain-based biomarkers of autism.