Mentoring in Patient-Oriented Neuroscience Research

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PROJECT SUMMARY I am a clinical researcher and Director of the Neurodevelopmental Laboratory on Addictions and Mental Health at McLean Hospital. I also am an Associate Professor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. I have been continuously funded as a principal investigator (PI) to conduct NIAAA-sponsored patient-oriented research (POR) since 2004 and have been a collaborator and consultant on several additional NIH-sponsored grants. My research has focused on understanding adolescent brain development, and risk for and underlying neurobiology of addiction and psychiatric disorders. I currently serve as PI on one NIAAA R01 grant and one Foundation grant, and am Co-Investigator on 3 R01s (NIMH, NCCAM, NIDA) and 1 R21 (NIAAA). I mentor a growing group of junior investigators, including 3 mentees on K01 grants. I work in a rich environment for clinical research, which is ideal for training junior faculty in POR. However, I receive no institutional support for mentoring and will be required to curtail mentoring efforts to assume significant non-research responsibilities beginning in 2017. The K24 award will protect time that would permit an increase in intensive mentorship to junior investigators and attract researchers to POR. My immediate and long-term career objectives are to characterize neurobiological markers in addiction and psychiatric disorders, which will inform the development of new and effective treatments for alcohol use disorders and for patients with dual diagnoses, and to train the next generation of investigators to develop the skills they require to effectively conduct POR. I also remain committed to disseminating research findings (through publications, scientific lectures and public outreach) that will help prevention efforts and that will inform treatment interventions, to aid in the reduction of suffering due to alcohol use and abuse. The specific aims to be accomplished during the period of the award are to 1) provide substantive mentoring of junior investigators in POR (35%), 2) continue and extend involvement in my POR (10%), and 3) develop specific new content expertise in the areas of adolescent comorbid psychopathology, clinical approaches in adolescent treatment settings, and epigenetics (5%). I am committed to training a remarkable group of mentees, who are the future of addiction and psychiatry POR. Through intensive mentoring I will, in turn, enhance my POR by increasing my clinical perspectives, and by incorporating treatment and epigenetic components into new POR initiatives.