DeWitt Wallace Research Scholar Program 2009-2010
In addition to the above research training required for all residents, the Department offers the Dewitt Wallace Research Scholar program for residents who intend to pursue a research career after graduation from the residency program. Residents may express interest in the research track at any point during their training, beginning as early as the application process or PGY-I year. Upon acceptance into the program, residents will be given protected research elective time allowing for an in-depth research training experience under the mentorship of a senior investigator on a research project. In addition, the resident's progress on the research track is closely monitored by the Resident Research Committee. The research track may diverge from the traditional residency as early as the PGY-I year with clinical requirements adjusted in a manner to allow significant portions of time to pursue research, while assuring rigorous clinical training and the fulfillment of board eligibility requirements. For residents in the research track, the majority of the final year of training may be used for research. The research track includes both project development and implementation, as well as counseling about planning for a research career. Mentorship and support is provided in the application process for research fellowships either at the Cornell Department of Psychiatry or at other programs.
Applicants with a special interest in research are encouraged to make known their interest when applying to the program so that we can arrange for interviews and meetings with appropriate Departmental investigators. Our aim is to insure that each applicant learns as much as possible about the wealth of research opportunities available at Cornell. Meetings with Cornell investigators can also be arranged outside of the regular interview day.
Research Program Leadership
Dr. BJ Casey directs the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, the Center for Brain, Gene and Behavioral (CBGB) research, and the Neuroscience Program at the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences. She is the Sackler Professor of Developmental Psychobiology and Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry, Neurology and Neuroscience, Weill Cornell Medical College. She completed her graduate work at USC in experimental psychology and behavioral neuroscience and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Child Psychiatry Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health using structural and magnetic resonance imaging to investigate neural correlates of psychiatric disorders. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants and is on the NIMH Board of Scientific Counselors and NARSAD Scientific Council and is a NYAS Fellow.
Dr. Casey is a pioneer in novel uses of neuroimaging methodologies to examine human behavior and brain development and how it goes awry in clinical disorders. She grounds her human behavioral and imaging work in collaborative animal studies of learning (rodent) and decision making (nonhuman primate) to identify mechanisms of resilience and vulnerability across development. Her work takes a developmental psychobiological perspective in understanding the role of gene-environment interactions on behavior with a focus on typical and atypical developmental trajectories of behavioral and brain-based change. She has developed an influential theoretical model of childhood disorders that have at the very core of them a problem suppressing an inappropriate thought or actions (e.g., childhood anxiety and depression, ADHD, autism) and developed behavioral marker tasks for assessing risk for such disorders. More recently she has discovered that adolescents are prone to poor decision making due to an imbalance between emotional centers of the brain involved in desire, fight and flight and prefrontal control regions that modulate these feelings. Her early imaging work published on adolescent anxiety and depression demonstrated greater resistance of these emotion centers to habituate with repeated presentation of empty threat. Dr Casey is now identifying genetic factors that contribute to this resistance phenotype with human and mouse genetics. This translational work is a first step in the direction of individualized and biologically targeted treatments for clinical disorders. For more information see: http://www.sacklerinstitute.org/cornell/people/bj.casey/
Dr. Francis Lee directs a molecular neurobiology laboratory in the Lasdon Research Building, and is a member of the Center for Brain, Gene and Behavioral (CBGB) research, Anxiety Disorders and ¬Traumatic Stress Studies Program, and the Neuroscience Program and Pharmacology Department at the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences. He is an Associate Professor in Psychiatry and Pharmacology, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Associate Attending Psychiatrist, New York Presbyterian Hospital. He received his undergraduate degree in physiological psychology from Princeton University, and an MD and PhD from the University of Michigan, followed by Psychiatry residency training at Payne Whitney Clinic. He obtained further postdoctoral training in molecular neuroscience at the Skirball Institute, New York University and the University of California, San Francisco. He is the recipient of numerous awards and grants and has served on NIMH panels, as well as worked as an editor for the Archives of General Psychiatry and JAMA.
Dr. Lee is a pioneer in using cell biological and animal model systems to understand the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric disorders. In particular, his research is focused on using genetic models to delineate the role of growth factors, such as brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), in complex behaviors related to affective disorders. The laboratory has recently produced one of the first mouse models of a human genetic variant that has led to novel insights into the molecular and genetic basis of anxiety, as well as drug response. This line of research provides not only a first step in creating animal model systems of human genetic variants to test novel therapeutics, but also to devise biomarker strategies to determine who will and will not respond to psychiatric medications. For more information see: http://www.cornellphysicians.com/fslee