Program Administration
T32 Executive Committee
David J. Moore, PhD
Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Program Director/Principal Investigator (PD/PI), Primary Mentor
Research Interests: the interplay between substance use disorders, mental illness, and HIV, and their resulting impact on both neurocognitive and daily functioning outcomes; novel interventional strategies and methods to improve antiretroviral adherence among difficult to treat populations including HIV-infected persons who are active methamphetamine users (e.g., Individualized Texting for Adherence Building, iTAB); clinicopathological studies of neuroAIDS.
Jennifer E. Iudicello PhD
Associate Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: T32 Co-Director, Primary Mentor
Research Interests: Neurocognitive and real-world consequences associated with HIV, substance use disorders, and aging; the relationship between vascular injury and central nervous system consequences in HIV and substance use disorders.
Igor Grant, MD, FRCP
Distinguished Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: T32 Co-Director, Primary Mentor
Research Interests: Effects of HIV on the brain and the potential that abuse of certain drugs, such as methamphetamine, in combination with aging, produce accelerated CNS injury; therapeutic potential of medicinal cannabis; psychobiological effects of chronic stress on physiologic and behavioral function.
Jessica Montoya, PhD
Assistant Adjunct Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Associate Director, Primary Mentor
Research Interests: Implementation science research involving community partnerships (including with American Indian communities and various community-organizations serving PWH) to implement evidence-based practices that target factors (e.g., SUDs) disrupting HIV care and prevention.
T32 Faculty Mentors
Gregory Aarons, PhD
Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor, Internal Advisory Board Member
Research Interests: His research identifies and improves system, organizational, and individual
factors that support implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices and quality of care in health and allied health care settings.
Arthur Brody, PhD
Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: His research focuses on brain imaging and treatment of addiction (including ongoing research focusing on (PWH). His group has studied the effects of addiction on positron emission tomography (PET), including studies of neuroinflammation as measured with PET in humans. His research and clinical work have used pharmacotherapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy treatments for addiction (i.e., tobacco, cannabis).
Mariana Cherner, PhD
Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor, Internal Advisory Board Member
Research Interests: Neurobehavioral consequences of infectious disease and substance abuse as well as cross-cultural neuropsychological evaluation; individual differences in vulnerability to brain dysfunction associated with METH and other drugs in the context of HIV infection (e.g., genetic factors); neurocognitive consequences of hepatitis C; cultural and linguistic considerations in the assessment of cognition and everyday functioning.
Pieter Dorrestein, PhD
Professor - Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Departments of Pharmacology University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: He has developed a metabolomics analysis platform that is accessed 200,000 times a month. Dr. Dorrestein has pioneered the development of mass spectrometry methods to study the chemical crosstalk between populations of microorganisms, including host interactions, for understanding the etiology of disease, diagnostic, and therapeutic applications. He also is on the leadership team for the UCSD Center of Microbiome Innovation.
Ronald Ellis, MD, PhD
Professor - Department of Neuroscience, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: HIV- and substance-related neurologic disorders; viral, inflammatory and vascular factors related to neuroAIDS and substance abuse; mechanisms and clinical correlates (e.g., cognitive) of neural injury and treatment.
Christine Fennema-Notestine, PhD
Professor - Department of Psychiatry & Radiology, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: Dr. Fennema-Notestine is a cognitive neuroscientist with multi-modal neuroimaging expertise. She researches MRI methods development and clinical applications and in HIV, substance use, aging, neurodegenerative disease, and other conditions.
Jerel A Fields, PhD
Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: Understanding the mechanisms through which cannabinoids and HIV affect mitochondrial function, autophagy and inflammatory pathways in the brain.
Olivier George, PhD
Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: The use and development of animal models relevant to substance use disorder in order to identify the genetic, molecular, and cellular mechanisms of drug addiction, develop novel biomarkers for the diagnosis of SUD and novel therapeutic approaches to SUD treatment.
Sara Gianella, PhD
Professor - Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: Clinical and translational virology, molecular biology, and immunology. She applies
rigorous analytical methods to address pressing problems in infectious diseases including investigating HIV
persistence in various tissues and anatomical compartments across the human body and clinical complications related to persistent immune activation.
David Grelotti, MD
Associate Clinical Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: measurement-based care model for the treatment of depression among HIV-infected persons in Haiti, as well as studies of the recreational use of HIV antiretroviral medication in South Africa. Clinical work: Director of Mental Health Services at Owen Clinic.
Amanda Bischoff Grethe, PhD
Associate Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: She explores brain structure and function in HIV, substance use, prenatal alcohol exposure, and eating disorders. She has extensive experience in the development, conduct, and analysis of multimodal neuroimaging, including brain morphometry, task-based functional MRI, task-free functional connectivity, and diffusion weighted imaging. Her research includes the study of frontostriatal engagement during reward expectation and receipt, and how populations known to exhibit significant differences in impulse control interpret rewarding situations.
Joanna Jacobus, PhD
Associate Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: The relationship between adolescent and young adult substance use, brain development, cognition, and functional outcomes, with a focus on the long-term effects of alcohol, cannabis, and nicotine use. She uses prospective designs to examine how pre- and post-substance use interacts with substance use patterns on behavioral and health-related outcomes.
Rob Knight, PhD
Professor - Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor, Internal Advisory Board Member
Research Interests: Dr. Knight is an international leader in studies of the human microbiome. His laboratory provided one of the first overall maps of the human microbiome across human body sites, as well as software for interpreting and understanding the vast flood of DNA sequence data that comprises our understanding of the human microbiome. He also has contributed to understanding how the human microbiome develops over one’s lifetime.
Scott Letendre, MD
Professor - Departments of Medicine & Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor, Internal Advisory Board Member
Research Interests: CNS effects of HIV disease and co-factors, such as substance use and co-infections; the identification and validation of novel biomarkers of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders and the effects of antiretroviral therapy on the central nervous system.
Judith Lobo, PhD
Assistant Professor - Departments of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: She uses neuroimaging and cerebrospinal fluid and plasma biomarkers to investigate brain health among people with HIV who use substances (specifically METH). She also investigates the intersection of aging with HIV and the effect of past substance use.
Thomas Marcotte, PhD
Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: NeuroAIDS; cannabis (including medicinal cannabis); state-of-the art technological tools for investigating the CNS impact of HIV and its comorbidities (e.g., a driving simulator and iPad neurocognitive screening battery); international assessment of the neurocognitive effects of HIV/AIDS (India, Romania).
Arpi Minassian, PhD
Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: Dr. Minassian’s translational research program investigates the relationship between biology and behavior in mental illness, medical illness, and substance use. Her research has implemented physiological and cognitive paradigms to understand brain dysfunction in psychiatric and neurocognitive disorders and substance use. These paradigms can also be translated to animals, which accelerates our understanding of biological mechanisms.
Raeanne C. Moore, PhD
Associate Adjunct Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: aging, successful aging, mHealth, neuropsychology, everyday functioning, positive psychological traits, HIV/AIDS, serious mental illness, ecological momentary assessment, cognitive and functional rehabilitation.
Annie Nguyen, PhD
Associate Professor - Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health & Human Longevity Science, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: Dr. Nguyen’s broad research interests are in factors and interventions that promote resilience across the lifespan, particularly in the context of PWH and other co-occurring conditions like substance use. She examines social determinants of health to better understand and alleviate health disparities. Her research also investigates health behavior change over time in response to health, stress, and life trajectories.
Erin Sundermann, PhD
Associate Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor, Clinical Supervisor
Research Interests: Dr. Sundermann’s broad research scope concerns risk and protective factors, particularly age- and sex/gender-related factors, of cognitive impairment among PWH. She is invested in identifying sex/gender disparities in neuroHIV and mental health in the context of HIV given the sociocultural differences between women and men with HIV and the higher rates of psychosocial risk factors in women versus men with HIV including early-life trauma, depression and SUDs. She also investigates the overlap between AD and neurocognitive problems in PWH by identifying unique neuropsychological profiles with distinct biomarker and neuropathological signatures and the roles that substance uses disorders, depression and inflammation confer risk.
Jared Young, PhD
Professor - Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: Dr. Young investigates the neural circuitry underlying behavioral abnormalities in major neuropsychiatric disorders, with particular interest in addiction comorbidities. Despite molecular and genetic advances in understanding the etiology of SUDs, treatment development has not kept pace; in part because of the scarcity of effective cross-species models. Dr. Young uses cutting-edge neuroscience to develop novel and sophisticated cross-species tasks to identify targetable mechanisms to treat such illnesses. Thus, the likelihood of a mechanism and/or positive effect in animals will more readily translate to humans because of the compatibility of such cross-species tests.
Florin Vaida, PhD
Professor - Department of Biostatistics, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Primary Mentor
Research Interests: Dr. Vaida has contributed to HIV research over the last 25 years, in the context of developing HIV treatment, and studying HIV effects on the brain, as evidenced by neurocognitive testing and neuroimaging. His work has led to the design, performance, and analysis of results of several large clinical trials and observational studies of HIV. He has developed methods for analyzing longitudinal data, in particular for the analysis of longitudinal HIV viral load subject to censoring below the limit of detection. He has developed methodology for improved efficiency of study design for longitudinal clustered-randomized trials. Dr. Vaida is expert in clustering techniques (e.g., machine learning, k-means clustering) that will support investigation of the biotypes theme.
T32 Faculty Consultant
Robert K Heaton, PhD
Distinguished Professor Emeritus Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego
Role on T32: Consultant
Research Interests: Neurobehavioral and everyday functioning consequences of HIV infection and substance use disorders; influence of demographic factors (e.g., age, education, sex, ethnicity) on cognitive test performance; the development of comprehensive demographically-corrected normative data for neuropsychological tests and standardized methods for detecting significant NP changes over time; cross-cultural neuropsychology.
Email: rheaton@ucsd.edu