Current Research Track Residents
I am a PGY3 resident on the research track. During a post-baccalaureate fellowship at the NIH, I fostered a long-lasting interest in how the immune system impacts human health and disease. This led me to join the MD/PhD program at the University of Cincinnati wherein my PhD studies uncovered an underappreciated and complex interface between the immune system and adipose tissue function in obesity. For me, the research track at Penn was the ideal place to blend top notch clinical training in Psychiatry with unparalleled opportunities to dissect the inter-relationship between the immune system, metabolism, and behavioral health.
I am a PGY3 resident on the research track interested in medical anthropology, the anthropology of childhood, and cultural psychiatry. Prior to medical school, I conducted ethnographic research on the right to gender affirming care within the Brazilian public health system. I then joined the MD-PhD program at Penn, where I completed a PhD in anthropology focused on gender-affirming medical care for children. I am broadly interested in the intersections between childhood, identity, culture, and mental health, and am beginning a research project that examines the rise of evidence-based psychotherapies from a social historical point of view. Outside of residency, I enjoy distance running and going on bike rides with my daughters.
(pronouns: they/them) Prior to medical school, I studied biochemistry and gender studies at Yale, conducting research on a wide spectrum of biologically-and socially-determined aspects of gender-based health disparities, and earned my M.S. developing the first animal model of gender-affirming hormone therapy. While earning my M.D. at Columbia in NYC, I developed my research focus on transgender, non-binary, and/or gender diverse (TNG) mental health and self-image, using qualitative and mixed methods. During residency I've taken full advantage of the rich EPSP mentorship network and funding support to conduct research informing targeted mental health interventions for TNG communities using implementation science methods (mentored by Dr. Courtney Wolk). I have three forthcoming books (written/edited during PGY1 and PGY2): Gender-Affirming Psychiatric Care, the first textbook on psychiatric care for transgender, non-binary, and/or gender expansive (TNG) communities (American Psychiatric Association Publishing, November 2023); Gender is Really Strange, a graphic novel about the rich complexities of gender—sociocultural to neuroscience (Jessica Kinglsey Publishers, October 2023); and a poetry chapbook TRANS-abdominal Retrieval: a (gender)queer Jewish quest to make an embryo (Beyond the Veil Press, August 2023). My goal is to have a dual clinical and research career, developing evidence-based therapeutic interventions for TNG individuals. More about my work can be found at teddygoetz.com.
I am a PGY3 resident on the research track interested in addiction psychiatry and women's mental health. I attended the University of Maryland, College Park for undergrad, where I majored in Psychology and Neurophysiology Afterwards, I spent a research year in Amsterdam studying risk-taking behaviors before landing in New Haven to do my MD-PhD at Yale. During my PhD, I investigated sex differences in stress and nicotine addiction. I'm excited to continue my training at Penn, with all the amazing opportunities and support in both research and clinical training that are available here.
My research career began by studying heart development and gastrulation in the chick model system at Dr. Takashi Mikawa's lab. I then transitioned to the field of systems neuroscience during my MD/PhD. For my thesis work in Dr. Benjamin Arenkiel's lab, I explored how different inhibitory interneurons affect sensory processing in the mammalian olfactory bulb. As a PGY 3, I am seeking to transition again into clinical and translational research with the aim to directly affect patient care.
I am a PGY3 resident on the research track. Through several research projects in college, I became fascinated by brain development and its contributions to neuropsychiatric disorders. My clinical interests in mental illness and my research interests in developmental neuroscience led me to enroll in the MD/PhD Program at Rutgers RWJMS. For my PhD dissertation work I utilized induced pluripotent stem cell technology to better understand how autism impacts the development of early neurons. My dissertation work elucidated molecular markers and pathways that contribute to autism associated developmental changes. By the end of my PhD, I became more fascinated with how the developmental changes I uncovered in cells in a dish translated to the actual human brain. Did an excess of proliferation in neural cells in a dish, for example, mean macrocephaly (large brains) in a child? To further explore these questions, I have now joined the Brain Gene Development Lab headed by Dr. Aaron Alexander-Bloch. My project involves studying and comparing different forms of micro and macrocephaly across the lifespan with the ultimate goal of understanding the molecular drivers that can lead to these changes in the brain.
I am currently a PGY2 on the research track with an interest in studying neurodevelopment using neuroimaging. I discovered research late in my undergraduate career at the University of Miami. To explore this new world of research, I spent 2 years after graduation at the NIH using a broad range of methods to investigate the neurobiology of anxiety in humans. I continued my education at Vanderbilt, where I completed my neuroscience PhD studying anxiety-associated brain regions in individuals with alcohol use disorder. At Penn I plan to use neuroimaging to understand neurodevelopment and how psychiatric disorders emerge throughout childhood and adolescence.
I became interested in research after spending a summer studying the prevalence of psychiatric illness in earthquake survivors in Haiti. I became intrigued by resilience to social stress and worked in a lab as an undergrad at Duke studying the neural circuits involved in susceptibility to social stress in a rodent model. I pursued an MD/PhD at UVA and used human stem cells to study how genomic stress during brain development can cause DNA damage in high-risk psychiatric genes. I look forward to joining the Penn research track and combining my interest in understanding mechanisms of resilience to stress with my passion for community mental health work.
I grew up in New Jersey in the suburbs of NYC. From there I headed to Haverford College just outside Philly, where I majored in chemistry and found my passion for research during my senior thesis on molecular regulation of protein aggregation in Huntington’s Disease. In pursuit of a mixed career as a physician-scientist, I went on to the MD/PhD program at WashU in St. Louis, where my PhD work explored how focal cortical injury and stimulation change brain network dynamics, using neuroimaging and electrophysiology in mouse models. I am hoping to clinically specialize in interventional neuromodulation therapies like ECT, TMS, and ketamine, and blend this with basic science research on the physiological mechanisms of brain stimulation using neural recordings in animal models. In the psychiatry world, I’m also interested in addiction, LGBTQ populations, and consult liaison psychiatry. In my free time, I enjoy cooking, home fermentation, hiking, and petting my three cats.
I am a PGY-1 resident on the research track. My research journey began at Yale, where I studied how chronic stress affects fear learning and alters neuroplasticity. As I watched friends and family struggle with psychiatric distress, I realized I wanted my research to speak to the needs and experiences of patients. After graduation, I investigated fundamental principles of circadian biology and how circadian rhythms are altered in animal models of Tuberous Sclerosis Complex at Boston Children’s Hospital. I then joined Columbia University to pursue an MD/PhD. My thesis work used mouse models to study the activity of thousands of neurons to better understand social recognition memory and identified new brain regions crucial for social fear and avoidance. During residency, I plan to combine my interests to investigate how stress, trauma, and anxiety alter neural activity and rhythms during sleep, with the hope of developing new interventions for individuals living with psychiatric disorders and sleep disturbances.
I am a PGY1 research track resident with an interest in neuroimaging. I went to college in Houston where I completed a BS in math and became interested in software and algorithm development. I used this as a basis for a few different research endeavors during my graduate studies at WashU in St. Louis where my main thesis focused on software and hardware development within optical neuroimaging. My clinical interest in psychiatry stemmed from witnessing the staggering effects social determinants of health had on patients I was caring for in St. Louis. I hope to see how developing more affordable and accessible interventional neuromodulation techniques could serve as a resource to help mitigate this.
Hello! I grew up in northern New Jersey, but moved to upstate New York to study neuroscience at Hamilton College. I then lived for a few years in Washington DC, where I first became interested in medicine during a post-bac fellowship at the NIH. After that I joined the MD/PhD program at Brown, where my PhD work used awake brain recordings from neurosurgical patients with Parkinson's disease to identify brain activity associated with PD symptoms such as tremor and slowness. Upon returning to my clerkships however, I realized psychiatry was my calling as it allowed me to compassionately treat patients while understanding the complex interactions of mind, brain, and life experience. At Penn I am looking forward to continuing my neurosurgical/neuromodulation research with patients with intractable psychiatric illness, while learning how these disorders impact learning and cognition. Clinically I am interested in interventional and consult-liaison psychiatry, but I am very excited for broad training over the next few years. Outside of the hospital and lab, I enjoy spending time with my family.
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