TPNI Mentors

Ruth Barrientos, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health
Research Interests: role of inflammation on cognitive impairments.

D. Michele Basso, EdD, PT
Professor, School of Health and Rehab Sciences
Associate Director, School of Health and Rehab Sciences
Director of Research, School of Health and Rehab Science
Research Interests: Develop rehabilitative therapies that promote recovery of mobility.

Andrew Fischer, PhD
Professor, Department of Neuroscience
Research Interests: Development, regeneration and survival of cells in the neurosensory tissue of the eye, the retina.

Jonathan Godbout, PhD
Assistant Director for Basic Science, Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research
Professor, Center for Brain and Spinal Cord Repair
Professor, Department of Neuroscience
Faculty Director, Chronic Brain Injury
Research Interests: Determining the degree to which the bi-directional communication between the brain and the immune system is affected by age, stress, and traumatic CNS injury. In addition, to delineate the mechanism by which inflammatory cytokine pathways cause long-lasting complications.

Mireia Guerau, PharmD, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Neuroscience
Assistant Professor, School of Health and Rehab Sciences
Research Interests: Understanding the effects that miRNA has on immune cell phenotype and the development of central nervous system autoimmunity/inflammation.

Kathryn Lenz, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
Research Interests: Understand the mechanisms that shape brain development and lifelong behavior, with a focus on the interactions between nervous, endocrine and immune systems.

Amy Lovett-Racke, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Microbial Infection and Immunity
Research Interests: Understand the role that T cells play in the onset and progression of multiple sclerosis to understand the cause of disease and develop therapies to treat the disease.

Dana McTigue, PhD
Professor and Vice Chair of Research, Department of Neuroscience and Center for Brain and Spinal Cord Repair
Research Interests: Spinal cord injury and recovery of function, gliogenesis, adult progenitor cell function, demyelination and remyelination of the CNS.

Karl Obrietan, PhD
Professor, Department of Neuroscience
Research Interests: Neurological disorders, neuronal signaling, and circadian clocks

Phillip Popovich, PhD
Professor and Chair, Department of Neuroscience
Co-Director of the Neuroscience Research Institute
Director of the Center for Brain and Spinal Cord Repair
Research Interests: Neuroimmunology of spinal cord injury, immunological influences on neuronal degeneration and regeneration, neuroendocrine influences (e.g., stress/HPA axis activation) on inflammatory mediated injury/repair of the CNS.

Leah Pyter, PhD
Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Neuroscience
Assistant Professor, Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research
Research Interests: Cancer behavioral comorbidities, psychoneuroimmunology, wound healing, stress.

Jan Schwab, PhD
Professor, Department of Neurology
Professor, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Professor, Department of Neuroscience
Research Interests: Understand and treat the maladaptive immune response after spinal cord injury (SCI).

John Sheridan, PhD
Associate Director, Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research
Professor, Division of Biosciences
Research Interests: Neuroendocrine regulation of inflammation, psychoneuroimmunology, neuroimmunology, stress biology, host repair of tissue damage, immunity to viral and bacterial challenges.