As an undergraduate, Dr. Joshua Kaufman was accepted into Stony Brook’s BS/MD program and majored in biology, where he conducted electrophysiology research and published a 1st author paper on the role of connexin proteins in cardiac conduction. Once in medical school, however, he decided to pursue psychiatry, and switched his research to the lab of Dr. Ramin Parsey, where he used PET to study the Serotonin 5HT-1A system in unipolar depression. Once again, this work was very productive, earning Dr. Kaufman a 1st author paper in Neuropsychopharmacology, a poster at the Society of Biological Psychiatry (SOBP), and SOBP’s Chairman Choice Award. Dr. Kaufman was also a clinically superb medical student, and he was elected to AOA in his senior year. Bringing together the labs of Drs. John Mann and Frances Levin, Dr. Kaufman is currently working on a translational neuroscience project which seeks to elucidate the role of the kappa-opioid receptor system in alcohol use disorder relapse. As this is a novel target. Dr. Kaufman, working with Drs. Nasir Naqvi and Jeffrey Miller, are using PET to investigate target engagement. Dr. Kaufman is intensifying his research time, and will have 80% time for research as a PGY4. He hopes to continue on to a T32 research fellowship, with the goals of becoming an independently funded investigator in addictions psychiatry.
