Meet Our 2025 Distinguished Investigators
In 2025, the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation awarded Distinguished Investigator Grants valued at $1 million to 10 senior-level scientists who are conducting groundbreaking research in neurobiological and behavioral science. Recipients of the $100,000, one-year grants are exploring critical areas of mental health, including opioid use disorder, depression in pregnant women, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the effects of psychedelics on perception and consciousness.
Recipients of the Distinguished Investigator Grants are full professors at research institutions in the United States and abroad. They were selected by a committee of the BBRF Scientific Council, which is comprised of 192 experts across disciplines in brain and behavior research who review grant applications and recommend the most promising ideas to fund.
The Recipients of the 2025 Distinguished Investigator Grants are as follows:
E. S. Anton, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will investigate signaling molecules and processes (the “signalome”) engaged when the primary cilium of neurons is activated, including how it might be harnessed in the service of neural circuit modulation and correction. The hope is to establish how deregulated primary cilia signaling interferes with neural circuit dynamics and contributes to circuit malfunction.
Flavio Frohlich, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will develop and test a novel non-invasive neurostimulation approach (aperiodic tACS) designed to rapidly reduce depression symptoms in women who are pregnant. tACS, or transcranial alternating current stimulation, has been shown to be safe and effective in major depressive disorder in several pilot trials.
Rita Goldstein, Ph.D., Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, seeks to identify reliable behavioral markers of brain function that change with treatment and predict outcomes in individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD). The team will employ a naturalistic approach targeting spontaneous speech, which will serve as a behavioral marker of neural plasticity with treatment.
Marek Kubicki, M.D., Ph.D., Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Inc., focuses on matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9), a protein involved in conveying pro-inflammatory molecules from the periphery into the brain via the blood-brain barrier. MMP-9 blood levels are elevated in all stages of schizophrenia, The team will employ PET scanning to test a recently developed MMP-9 brain marker called [18F] MMPi in 12 individuals.
Christopher J. Pittenger, M.D., Ph.D., Yale University, investigates rare, potentially causal mutations in OCD. The team recently identified the first such mutation, in a gene called Scube1. Recapitulating this mutation in a mouse leads to repetitive behaviors and cognitive inflexibility. This project will further characterize the model, seeking insights into consequences of the mutation that can then be investigated in patients.
Sagiv Shifman, Ph.D., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, hypothesizes that a brain “protection factor” provides resistance for neurodevelopmental disorders in females, and aims to identify its neurobiological origin. The team will use mouse models of autism spectrum disorder that show social behavior problems in males. They will also use a mouse model to assess how sex chromosomes and sex hormones affect gene activity in the brain and determine what factors contribute to the protective effect in female mice.
Doris Tsao, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, aims to uncover neural mechanisms behind the effects of psychedelics on perception and consciousness. She will study these effects using macaque monkeys. By comparing how the brain represents expectations in facial perception with and without the influence of psychedelics, she hopes to be able to observe how these substances alter perception at the neural level.
Jared W. Young, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, seeks to develop therapeutics to address cognitive deficits in bipolar disorder patients. The team will target presynaptic mechanisms related to very high dopamine levels (hyperdopamienrgia), specifically, the trace amine associated receptor-1 (TAAR1), which can catabolize dopamine at the presynaptic level. The receptor will be specifically targeted (with an agonist) in the mouse anterior cingulate cortex, on the hypothesis that it will remediate ACC hyperdopaminergia in the mice.
Venetia Zachariou, Ph.D., Boston University, aims to understand the neurochemical and molecular mechanisms underlying the actions of opioids, in order to make interventions that promote analgesia while minimizing the risk of addiction. This project identify seeks to identify novel G protein signaling cascades that control gene expression maladaptation associated with undesired action of opioids and risk for the development of substance use disorders.
Stanislav S. Zakharenko, M.D., Ph.D., St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, will elucidate cellular manifestations of auditory hallucinations in mouse models of the two strongest genetic predictors of schizophrenia, 22q11.2 microdeletion syndrome (22q11DS) and 3q29 microdeletion syndrome (3q29DS). He proceeds from the team’s identification of abnormal sound-associated neuronal ensembles that appear during periods of silence (SNEADS) in the auditory cortex, investigating the possibility that SNEADS might be a pathogenic event that is a cellular correlate of auditory hallucinations.
