NeTReF Welcomes First Post-Doctoral Fellow

Jessica Babb, PhD (an advanced postdoctoral fellow from Children’s Hospital), started on July 2^nd, 2018 as the first Postdoctoral Fellow in VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), Harvard Medical School (HMS) Neuropsychiatry Translational Research Fellowship (NeTReF) that was awarded from the VA Office of Academic Affairs.

The overall NeTReF Director is Ann Rasmusson, MD, the Psychiatry Liaison for PTSD Research and Education at VA Boston Healthcare System (VABHS), a Research Affiliate of the Women’s Health Science Division of the National Center for PTSD, and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at BUSM. Dr Rasmusson is an expert in the neurobiology of PTSD with a focus on sex differences. She has responsibility for the overall NeTReF multidisciplinary education and training program.

Gary Kaplan, MD, is the NeTReF Co-Director and Primary Mentor for Dr Babb. Dr Kaplan is a Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics at BUSM and a Psychiatrist in the Primary Care Behavioral Health Program at VABHS and Director of a well-established VA funded pre-clinical Neuroscience Research Laboratory. He will be the primary mentor for Dr. Babb at VABHS in a preclinical project that examines opiate effects on synaptic plasticity in comorbid models of Opiate Addiction and PTSD and Opiate Addiction and TBI.

Dr Babb will collaborate with secondary research mentors at McLean Hospital, Kerry Ressler, MD, PhD and Elana Chartoff, PhD.  Dr Ressler is a world-renowned expert in PTSD translational neuroscience. Dr Chartoff is an expert in the neurobiological mechanisms that connect depression and anxiety with drug addiction. Dr Babb will receive training in advanced molecular techniques relevant to her VA research program in Dr Ressler’s and Dr Chartoff’s laboratories at McLean Hospital, which is affiliated with HMS.