Psychiatric disorders are highly prevalent; yet, our understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms leading to the development of these disorders is unfortunately scarce. As a consequence, we also currently lack effective preventive and therapeutic strategies, which leads to an enormous burden for individuals, families, and our societies. The goal of our group is to contribute to a better understanding of psychiatric diseases and thus better interventions. Pursuing a translational approach, we integrate clinically derived data sets and samples, animal models and a diverse set of molecular approaches to identify factors contributing on the molecular level to risk or resilience for psychiatric diseases.

Our lab currently works with the National Primate Research Centers in Atlanta (GA), Madison (WI), and Cayo Santiago (PR) on behavioral epigenetics in rhesus macaques. We profile DNA methylation in macaques and human subjects to investigate the effects of environmental factors such as early life adversity on long-term epigenetic programming. In addition, the lab has active research programs on bulk, single-cell, and spatial transcriptomics in rodent, non-human primate and post-mortem human brain tissue to understand phenotype-specific changes in gene expression across brain regions.