CIRCADIAN - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Vice Chair, Basic Science Research
Angelica Luis is currently an undergraduate in the M.S./B.S. program at UCSD, where she is majoring in Biochemistry and Cell Biology. After joining the McCarthy Lab in May 2017, she began work differentiating iPSC lines into NPCs. She is interested in studying how iPSC-derived neurons of bipolar disorder patients react to different treatments.
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- Interim Chair, EDI Action Council
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- Member of the Contracts & Grants Fund Managers Team
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- Clinical Affairs Administrative Assistant
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- Deputy Vice Chair, Veterans Affairs
Carla Marienfeld, MD, DFAPA, FASAM is board-certified in psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, and addiction medicine, and she is a Clinical Professor at the University of California San Diego who supports recovery in an evidence based, harm-reduction approach through therapy, motivational interviewing, and medication treatment. Her research involves analysis of electronic medical record data for individuals with substance use disorders. She has authored or co-authored over 35 peer reviewed articles, book chapters, practice guidelines, and invited commentaries, and she edited two books: Motivational Interviewing for Clinical Practice and Absolute Addiction Psychiatry Review: An essential board exam study guide. She has been highly involved in education of colleagues and trainees about addiction psychiatry and effective interventions including buprenorphine treatment and motivational interviewing, and she is the fellowship director for the UCSD Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship. Dr. Marienfeld completed a fellowship in addiction psychiatry and residency training in psychiatry at Yale. During her residency, she was chief resident of psychiatry and founded (and later led) the Yale Global Mental Health Program. She earned a medical degree with honors from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. She is active in many professional organizations, including the American Society of Addiction Medicine, the American Association of Addiction Psychiatry, and the American Psychiatric Association.
Carla Marienfeld, M.D., is a board-certified addiction psychiatrist who specializes in treating individuals with substance use disorders and co-occurring mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression. She supports recovery in a harm-reduction approach that uses therapy, motivational interviewing, and medication-assisted treatment.
An associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry, her research looks at health outcomes for individuals with substance use disorders and involves monitoring the implementation of evidence-based practices in the treatment of substance use disorders. She has been highly involved in educating colleagues and trainees about addiction psychiatry and effective interventions, including buprenorphine treatment and motivational interviewing.
She is a member of many professional organizations, including the American Society of Addiction Medicine, the American Association of Addiction Psychiatry, and the American Psychiatric Association
Job Titles:
- Administrative Vice Chair ( AdVC )
- Administrative Vice Chair ( AdVC ) and DBO
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- Member of the Contracts & Grants Fund Managers Team
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- Contracts & Grants Trainer
Dr. Lasoff grew up outside of Washington, DC. He completed his undergraduate studies in economics at Northwestern University and then his medical degree at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Peoria. After completing his residency at UC San Diego, he stayed on to complete a fellowship in medical toxicology. His academic interests are drugs of abuse and resuscitation.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Alessandra Porcu received her Pharm.D. from the University of Cagliari (Italy) and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Cagliari & University of Basel (Switzerland). Dr. Porcu joined the Welsh Lab in November 2016, and she has since been studying cellular circadian clock in mood disorders and the effects of photoperiod on peptidergic expression in the SCN in collaboration with the Dulcis Lab. In 2020 she received a K99 award from NIH-NCCIH. She will join the Department of Drug Discovery & Biomedical Science at University of South Carolina as Assistant Professor in June 2022.
Dr. Arthur Brody is a graduate of Vassar College, Tufts University School of Medicine, and the UCLA psychiatry residency (along with a research fellowship at UCLA). He is board certified in Addiction and General Psychiatry, and his clinical patient care and research focus on tobacco/nicotine dependence. In clinical contexts, he treats >100 patients per year with tobacco/nicotine use disorder. He is the medical director for smoking cessation programs at the VA San Diego Healthcare Systems, in which medication management and group/individual psychotherapies are used. As for research, his focus is brain imaging and treatment of tobacco use disorder, and he has studied the effects of addiction on positron emission tomography (PET) scanning outcomes, including studies of glucose metabolism, dopamine receptor availability, nicotinic acetylcholine receptor availability, and neuroinflammation. In these contexts, he has published approximately 100 papers and has been an investigator on >30 funded grants. Dr. Brody is also an Associate Editor for the journal Neuropsychopharmacology and a Senior Editor for the journal Addiction.
Job Titles:
- Principal Investigator of the Welsh Lab, Professor of Psychiatry
Dr. David K. Welsh graduated from Stanford University with a B.A.S. in Biological Sciences and Psychology, and went on to earn his M.D. and Ph.D. in Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. He completed his Internship and Residency in General Psychiatry at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, Pittsburgh, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biological Psychiatry at UCSD. Since 2003, he has been on the faculty of the UCSD Department of Psychiary. Dr. Welsh is most interested in studying the autonomy, heterogeneity, and coupling of cellular circadian clocks, and their role in mood disorders. Dr. Welsh is also a Staff Psychiatrist at the VA San Diego Healthcare System mood disorders clinic.
Job Titles:
- Health Medical Director of Neighborhood Healthcare
Dr. Gabriel Rodarte is the Behavioral Health Medical Director of Neighborhood Healthcare. He graduated from the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine in 2002. He specializes in Family Medicine and Psychiatry with an emphasis on addiction disorders. Dr. Rodarte is also affiliated with Riverside University Health System.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Himanshu Mishra earned a Ph.D. in Medical Research from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His work focused on motor neuron disease modeling using human induced pluripotent stem cells. After completing his Ph.D., Dr. Mishra continued to study stem cells while investigating the role of the autophagy-lysosomal pathway in neurodevelopment and synaptic degeneration. His current work in the McCarthy Lab involves studying the role of circadian rhythm-associated clock genes and the biological basis of lithium-induced neuroprotection in a human stem cell model of mood disorders.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Program Director
- Assistant Clinical Professor
Dr. Jason Schweitzer is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. He worked in several not-for-profit agencies serving the Latino community in Boston, focusing on substance abuse treatment, peer group advocacy and non-profit administration, and completed a Master's degree in Social Work at Columbia University in New York. During medical school, he had the opportunity to work with the mental health team at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless through a grant from the Albert Schweitzer Foundation. He received the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award, completed three years of adult psychiatry training at Harvard Longwood Psychiatry Residency Training Program, won an Outstanding Resident Teacher award from the Harvard Medical School student body in 2013, and was co-author on a paper describing the reverse co-location model of the integration of psychiatry and primary care medicine.
Job Titles:
- Chief of Psychiatry at Family Health Centers of San Diego
Dr. Joe Sepulveda serves as Chief of Psychiatry at Family Health Centers of San Diego. He is also the physician champion in charge of overseeing the clinical planning, implementation, and ongoing development of the Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) Program. Dr. Sepulveda received his Bachelor of Science in physiological science from UCLA and his medical degree from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He then received training in clinical research at Brigham and Women's Hospital prior to receiving his formal psychiatric training at Stanford University Hospital & Clinics. He is a Voluntary Assistant Clinical Professor at the UC San Diego Department of Psychiatry and is board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Dr. Sepulveda is also a member of the American Psychiatric Association, the San Diego Psychiatric Society, the American Society of Addiction Medicine, and the California Society of Addiction Medicine. In addition, Dr. Sepulveda serves on a California advisory board where he assists with implementing successful practices and lessons learned in addiction medicine more broadly into the primary care setting. Further, he is the consulting psychiatrist for the University of Washington AIMS Center - Archstone Foundation Community Collaborative Care Partnership Geriatric Grant.
Dr. Joseph Carley is a Staff Psychiatrist in the VA San Diego Healthcare System. He is the acting medical director of the Alcohol and Drug Treatment Program. He received his medical degree from the University of Alabama School of Medicine.
Job Titles:
- Executive Medical Director of Vista Hill SmartCare Behavioral Health Consultation Services
Dr. Mark Chenven is the Executive Medical Director of Vista Hill SmartCare Behavioral Health Consultation Services. He is also a Voluntary Clinical Professor in the UC San Diego Department of Psychiatry.
Job Titles:
- Director, Residency Training Office ( RTO )
- Principal Investigator of the McCarthy Lab, Professor of Psychiatry
- Research Service 151
Dr. Michael McCarthy earned his B.S. in Biochemistry and Psychology from the University of New Mexico, after which he achieved his M.D. and Ph.D. at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. He completed his Residency in Psychiatry at UCSD and his Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biological Psychiatry in the Welsh Lab prior to starting his own lab. In addition to studying circadian rhythms in cells derived from patients with mood disorders, Dr. McCarthy sees patients suffering from bipolar disorder at the VA San Diego Healthcare System.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Program Director
Dr. Michelle Wu is a board certified adult, child and adolescent psychiatrist. A Los Angeles native, Michelle left Southern California to attend Northwestern University, where she was part of the Honors Program in Medical Education. Realizing quickly that having four seasons is really lovely in pictures, but much less so with actual wind chill, Michelle returned to Southern California for her psychiatry training. She went to USC for her general psychiatry residency training, before heading across town to UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior for her child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship, where she was a Chief Fellow during her last year of training. Given her interests in academia, Michelle then returned to USC where she served as a consult-liaison psychiatrist at LAC+USC Medical Center and was also involved in graduate medical education as the Associate Training Director for the USC Psychiatry Residency Program.
Michelle left USC to join the UCSD family in Fall 2018, where she is currently a supervising attending for Rady Children's Hospital's child and adolescent inpatient psychiatry unit. Michelle is also the Associate Training Director for the UCSD Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program. Michelle has long been interested in decreasing the stigma that is associated with mental illness, and has a particular interest in promoting wellness and resiliency for medical trainees and professionals.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Psychiatry
- VA Site Training Director
Dr. Nick C. Mellos is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Voluntary at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and the site director for the UCSD Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship at the Veteran Affairs San Diego (VASD) Healthcare System. He is an Alpha Omega Alpha graduate of New York Medical College and he completed his psychiatry residency and addiction psychiatry fellowship training at Yale. After completing his training he stayed at Yale becoming the Chief of Psychiatric Emergency Services at the West Haven Connecticut VA. Among his accomplishments at Yale was the creation of a novel alcohol detoxification risk stratification approach to improve the pairing of detoxification interventions and the acquisition of a $10 million grant that resulted in the construction of a new state-of-the-art Emergency Psychiatry facility. Among his accomplishments since arriving at VASD and at UCSD in 2014 include co-founding the UCSD addiction psychiatry fellowship, serving as the acting Chief of Psychiatry at VASD, successfully leading efforts to expand medication-assisted treatments for opioid use disorder, and leading efforts to vastly expand outpatient mental health and addiction services resulting in the acquisition of 60 new positions and the opening of two new outpatient mental health facilities within VASD. He serves as Section Chief leading a 72-member team providing outpatient mental health care delivery for over 12,000 unique veterans annually. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a recipient of the APA Nancy C A Roeske teaching award, and provides addiction training locally and internationally.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Project Scientist
- Welsh Lab in 2009 As a Postdoctoral Fellow
After earning her undegraduate, M.S. and Ph.D degrees at Osaka University, Dr. Takako Noguchi joined the Welsh Lab in 2009 as a Postdoctoral Fellow. She specializes in the use of bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging techniques to monitor circadian rhythms in SCN neurons and peripheral tissues. Dr. Noguchi was also a member of Steve Kay's lab at USC/Scripps Research Institute.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Contracts & Grants Fund Managers Team
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- Administrative Assistant to the Chair
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- Vice Chair, Clinical Research
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- Licensed Clinical Psychologist
Eve Lasswell is a licensed clinical psychologist who primarily treats adults with substance use disorders and co-morbid conditions. She also works with patients struggling to manage posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, role transitions, and interpersonal difficulties. She is part of our Addiction Recovery and Treatment (ART) program, which uses a harm-reduction approach to provide care for all stages of recovery from substance use disorders. She is also familiar with abstinence-based models and seeks to tailor treatment to the unique needs of her individual patients. Dr. Lasswell has experience with a number of patient populations, including those with ethnic backgrounds different from her own, LGBTQIA+ folks, and current/former members of the US military.
Job Titles:
- Vice Chair, Psychiatry Education & Training
Heather Wei earned her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Biology at East China Normal University before completing her M.S. in Toxicology and Pharmacology at the University of Arizona. After holding numerous research positions at the University of Arizona, Merck Laboratories, Isis Pharmaceuticals, UCSD, Anesiva and Hyperion Biotechnology, she joined the Welsh-McCarthy group as lab manager. Her research efforts center on the study of circadian rhythms in skin cells from patients with depression and bipolar disorder, as well as in neuronal cells from mouse models of mood disorders.
Moss is the former associate director for clinical and translational Research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and is now a Voluntary Clinical Professor at UC San Diego Department of Psychiatry. He is a board-certified psychiatrist with added qualifications in the subspecialty of addiction psychiatry. He has authored over 175 peer-reviewed scientific journal publications and three books. He has been a professor of psychiatry at University of Pennsylvania, Vice Chair of psychiatry at Temple University, and professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh prior to assuming his role at N.I.H., and has held a Senior Scientist Award (K05) from National Institute on Drug Abuse. He has been the scientific director of two major federally-funded research centers (P60) at the University of Pittsburgh and has been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on numerous investigator-initiated research grants.
His research has focused on the clinical manifestations of substance use disorders, their etiology, and the intergenerational transmission of risk and resilience. This work has employed diverse methodologies that include psychiatric epidemiology, neuroimaging, behavior genetics, advanced statistical methods, neurochemistry/neuropharmacology, psychophysiology, and biomarker development.
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow, January 2007 - March 2009
- Principal Investigator of the Evans Lab
Jennifer Evans, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, January 2007 - March 2009
Dr. Evans is now the principal investigator of the Evans Lab and Assistant Professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Job Titles:
- Senior Academic Affairs Analyst
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- Member of the Contracts & Grants Fund Managers Team
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- Co - Director, Joint Doctoral Program ( JDP )
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- Member of the Contracts & Grants Fund Managers Team
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- Chairman 's Office Manager
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- Director of the Substance Abuse Recovery Treatment Program at the San Diego Veterans Medical Center
Dr. Soltani is the Director of the Substance Abuse Recovery Treatment Program at the San Diego Veterans Medical Center in La Jolla California. She completed her residency training at UC San Diego in the Combined Family Medicine and Psychiatry program.
Melissa LeRoux is now a medical student at Ohio State University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Contracts & Grants Fund Managers Team
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- Clinical Financial Analyst
Noelle Ying is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in Physiology and Neuroscience at UCSD. She joined the McCarthy lab in May 2017 and is in involved in reprogramming patient-derived stem cells into neurons in order to investigate the characteristics of Bipolar Disorder at the cellular level.
Job Titles:
- Clinical Affairs Program Manager
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- Psychiatrist at the Hospital De Santa Maria
UCSD Visiting Scholar November, 2014 - May 2015
Dr. Barandas is now a psychiatrist at the Hospital de Santa Maria in Lisbon, Portugal.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Contracts & Grants Fund Managers Team
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- Masters Student, 2009 - 2011
- Resident Physician in OB / GYN at the MetroHealth System
Ryan Darvish, M.D.
Masters Student, 2009 - 2011
Dr. Darvish is currently a resident physician in OB/GYN at The MetroHealth System in Cleveland, Ohio.
We are quite frankly spoiled to have Sabina Perez serving as our Program Administrator. Sabina has dedicated the past 19 years of her life to helping children and families as an employee at Rady Children's Hospital of San Diego.
Sabina is the consummate professional, and she is as warm and caring as she is efficient, effective, and reliable. Fellows know that when they visit Sabina that they have much more than a Program Adminstrator, but rather someone who cares genuinely about them as a person. Thank you for all that you do, and for being who you are Sabina!
Samreen Haque is an undergraduate student studying Physiology and Neuroscience at UC San Diego. Formerly a student researcher with the Delano-Wood and Schiehser Lab, she studied the relationship between mild-to-moderate truamatic brain injury history and left nucleus accumbens volume, as well as associated behavioral trends, in Veterans. She joined the Welsh lab in September 2017 with an interest in examining the mechanism of neurotransmitter switching as it relates to circadian rhythms and mood disregulation.
Job Titles:
- DOP Administrative Assistant
Job Titles:
- Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
- Staff Psychiatrist at VA San Diego Healthcare System
Co-Director of the Interprofessional Advanced Fellowship in Addiction Treatment. Dr. Matthews is also a Staff Psychiatrist at VA San Diego Healthcare System where he is Chief of the Consultation Liaison Division of the VA Psychiatry Service. He also provides care for veterans in one of the VA's outpatient mood clinics. Dr. Matthews is actively involved in teaching residents and medical students.
Job Titles:
- Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University
UCSD Visiting Scholar, April 2008 - June 2009
Dr. Bajestan is now a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and the neurospychiatric consultant at Stanford University's Inpatient Neurology Units, Epilepsy Monitoring Unit, and Outpatient Neurology Clinics.
Dr. Shawn SIngh Sidhu is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the UC San Diego School of Medicine where he currently serves as Program Director for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program.
Prior to his tenure at UC San Diego, Dr. Sidhu worked for 7 years at the University of New Mexico where he also served as Program Director for the UNM Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program. Dr. Sidhu has been highly active at AACAP and APA, and has focused primarily on underserved populations throughout his career. His interests include community-based systems of care and access to care, immigrant mental health, and Native American/Alaskan Native mental health.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Contracts & Grants Fund Managers Team
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- Postdoctoral Research Fellow, February 2011 - January 2013
Dr. Beesley is now a postdoc at Florida State University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Contracts & Grants Fund Managers Team
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- Vice Chair, Academic Affairs
Job Titles:
- Associate Vice Chair, Academic Affairs
Job Titles:
- Specialty Adult Psychiatry
Job Titles:
- Member of the Contracts & Grants Fund Managers Team
Dr. Benner attended University of Oregon for her undergraduate degree prior to receiving her M.D. from Poznan University of Medical Sciences in Poland. During medical school, she assisted Dr. Ieszcynska, a Clinical Associate Professor at Poznan, in ENT clinical research. Specifically, she contributed to the research project by performing post-surgical evaluations of patients who underwent partial-laryngectomy as well as evaluating patients suffering from sinusitis. Since joining the McCarthy Lab in October 2017, she has taken part in analyzing how the metabolism of antipsychotic drugs interferes with circadian rhythm functionality via action on D2 Dopamine receptors in pancreatic islet cells.
Job Titles:
- Vice Chair, Program Development & Operations