As schools and businesses close temporarily to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, many communities are suffering from the impact of lost jobs and services. Some areas face urgent needs around the suspension of in-school breakfast and lunch programs, which many children depend on for nutritious meals. While some districts have successfully implemented meal-to-go distributions, the children of Clairton, PA, currently...

Congratulations to David Kolko, PhD (Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics, Psychology, and Clinical and Translational Science), who has received a Medical Student Research Mentoring Merit Award from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The Research Mentoring Merit Award recognizes outstanding Longitudinal Research Project mentorship of a graduating Pitt Med student and is traditionally presented at the...

UPMC is dedicated to providing access to care for individuals across western Pennsylvania. Below, meet the leaders who oversee UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital (WPH)’s more than 85 ambulatory programs and consultation services. Jessica Gannon, MD Dr. Gannon is Medical Director, Ambulatory Comprehensive Recovery Services (CRS), which provides comprehensive specialized services to adults with schizophrenia...

The annual Society of Biological Psychiatry (SOBP) meeting, originally scheduled for April 30–May 2, 2020, is among the numerous academic conferences to be canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the meeting did not occur, the Department of Psychiatry remains committed to celebrating the achievements of our faculty. We are delighted to announce this year’s George Thompson Award honoree, as well as...

The Department of Psychiatry is delighted to congratulate Kenneth Perkins, PhD, who has been honored by the American Psychological Association (APA). Dr. Perkins received the APA’s Division 28 MED Associates Brady-Schuster Award, which honors a senior scientist who conducts outstanding research underscoring the fundamental importance of behavioral science to psychopharmacology or substance use disorder . An expert...

Scientists representing an international consortium of labs—including postdoctoral associate Despoina Aslanoglou, PhD, Kenneth Fish, PhD, and the study’s senior author, Zach Freyberg, MD, PhD, from Pitt Psychiatry—has published a new study in Science Advances, reporting new insights into the organization of the endoplasmic reticulum. The endoplasmic reticulum is a membrane network within a cell that is important in...

Physical distancing, stay-at-home orders and economic uncertainty resulting from the current COVID-19 pandemic have raised behavioral health concerns for many people. Below is a selection of strategies from Department of Psychiatry faculty and trainees on how to cope with the drastic alteration of our home, social and professional lives. For Kids and Adolescents Rameshwari Tumuluru, MD, an expert in helping...

Research has demonstrated that impaired decision-making is a key factor in the onset of suicidal behavior and can manifest as difficulty choosing between two similarly valued options or as impulsivity in decision-making. To better understand the potential relationship between decision-making and suicidal behavior, scientists have examined the neural underpinnings of each and found disrupted ventromedial prefrontal...

The Department of Psychiatry is delighted to announce that Dana Tudorascu, PhD, has joined the faculty at the rank of associate professor. Dr. Tudorascu earned her PhD in biostatistics from the University of Pittsburgh. During graduate school, she gained invaluable experience in statistical methods, fMRI and other imaging techniques, as well as in neuroimaging data analysis from Positron Emission Tomography (PET)...

We are delighted to announce that Yanhua Huang, PhD, has been appointed Tenured Associate Professor of Psychiatry by the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Huang’s research focuses on the role of changes in sleep on neural plasticity in reward circuits, with a focus on the association between sleep loss and addiction. She is currently the PI of five federally funded grants, including a National Institute on Drug Abuse...