Presentations will be delivered in the Colket Translational Research Building at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 3501 Civic Center Boulevard, Philadelphia, PA 19104.

Download the Final Stress Workshop Program which includes scheduling information.

On Tuesday evening, there will be an opening reception and registration. Please join us for some light fare and drinks, and to pick up your meeting booklet and badge. This is scheduled from 6:00-8:00pm at the Colket Translational Research Building (CTRB) Lobby (3501 Civic Center Blvd). If you can not join us on Tuesday evening, meeting materials will be available throughout the meeting.

On Wednesday during the lunch hour, we have organized a Mentor-Trainee roundtable lunch. All trainees are invited to attend. There will be “issues” designated for each table (e.g., grant writing strategies, academic job success strategies)…and trainees are free to join any discussion of their choice. A sign-up sheet will be located at the registration table, so we can estimate the number of attendees.

The poster session on Thursday evening will be held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Scientific Program
Keynote speaker: Dr. George F. Koob, Ph.D., Professor and Chairman of the Committee on the Neurobiology of Addictive Disorders and Director of the Laboratory of Psychopharmacology at The Scripps Research Institute and Adjunct Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.

His talk is entitled:

“The role of brain stress systems in the dark side of addiction.”

An authority on addiction and stress, Dr. Koob has published over 620 scientific papers and has received funding for his research from the National Institutes of Health, NIDA, NIAAA, and NIDDK. His current research is focused on exploration of the neurobiological basis for the neuroadaptation associated with drug dependence and stress.

Session I:  The role of stress in drug addiction and relapse.
Chair:  Dr. Julie Blendy, Professor, Dept. of Pharmacology, University of Pennsylvania

• Dr. Julie Blendy, Professor, Dept. of Pharmacology, University of Pennsylvania – Stress and reward sensitivity following nicotine withdrawal
• Dr. John Mantsch, Associate Professor & Chair, Dept. of Biological Sciences, Marquette University – Neurobiological mechanisms that contribute to stress-related cocaine use
• Dr. Klaus A. Miczek, the Moses Hunt Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry, Pharmacology and Neuroscience at Tufts University – Social stress and cocaine self-administration in females: Dopamine-CRF interactions in VTA-NAC
• Dr. Rebecca Ashare, Postdoctoral fellow, Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Nicotine Addiction, Department of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine – Stress,  autonomic reactivity  and smoking relapse

Session II: Molecular Mechanisms and Neural Circuits in Stress Regulation.
Chair:  Dr. Audrey Seasholtz, Professor, University of Michigan

• Dr. Rita Valentino, Professor, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine – Sex-biased stress signaling
• Dr. Mathias V. Schmidt, Faculty, Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry – Nectin-3 links CRHR1 signaling to stress-induced memory deficits
• Dr. James Herman, Professor, University of Cincinnati – Neurocircuit Mechanisms Controlling Stress
• Dr. John Christianson, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Colorado – The stressor controllability circuitry: the medial prefrontal cortex and beyond!

Session III: Neurobiological mechanisms underlying stress-related disorders.
Chair:  Dr. Robert Spencer, University of Colorado-Boulder, Professor, Psychology and Neuroscience

• Dr. Lisa Shin, Associate Professor, Psychology, Tufts University – Functional Neuroimaging Studies of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
• Dr. Becca Shansky, Assistant Professor, Northeastern University – Structural plasticity in the prefrontal cortex: interactions of sex, circuit, and stress
• Dr. Mitch Kling, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania and VA Medical Center – Central and Peripheral Stress System Activity in Major Depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Similarities and Differences
• Dr. Francis Lee, Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology, Weill Cornell Medical College – Role of Neurotrophins in Fear-related Learning

Session IV: Stress effects in vulnerable development time periods.
Chair:  Dr. Mary Dallman, Professor Emerita, Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco.

• Dr. John Russell, Professor, Center for Integrative Physiology, University of Edinburgh – Pre-natal stress programming of modulation of stress responses by neurosteroids
• Dr. Tallie Z. Baram, Professor of Anatomy/Neurobiology and Pediatrics, University of California at Irvine – Synaptic ‘rewiring’ of stress-processing neurons: the signal to activate epigenetic machinery?
• Dr. Sheryl Beck, Dept. of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine – Serotonin raphe circuitry development and stress
• Dr. Susan Andersen, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School – Sensitive periods and the effects of adverse experience on the brain and behavior in young adulthood

Session V:  Epigenetics and Stress.
Chair:  Dr. Teresa M. Reyes, Department of Pharmacology and Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, University of Pennsylvania.

• Dr. Tracy Bale, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Director, Neuroscience Center, University of Pennsylvania – Sex specific epigenetic programming of stress pathways: are we wired at  birth?
• Dr. David M. Dietz, Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University at Buffalo (SUNY) – From father to offspring- paternal transmission of depression and anxiety phenotypes
• Dr. Dietmar Spengler, Research Group Leader, Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry – DNA Memories of Early Social Life
• Dr. Marcelo Wood, Associate Professor, University of California-Irvine – The molecular brake pad hypothesis: Creating enduring memories