About the Committee
The NIDA IRP Technology Development Initiative (TDI) has successfully completed our first year organizing the TDI Paper of the Month Committee. Our goals are two-fold. First, we highlight recent papers on emerging technology that have potential or demonstrated use for substance abuse and addiction-related research. Second, we want to give NIDA IRP fellows opportunities to review primary literature and present to peers. Highlighted papers are featured on the IRP website and monthly IRP-wide emails, see example attached.
For our second year, TDI is offering an opportunity for pre-doctoral, post-doctoral, visiting and research fellows, Staff Scientists, PIs and Core staff to serve on the committee for reviewing and selecting papers highlighting emerging technologies. Meetings are held quarterly and members will present only 1 paper per meeting. The voting structure for selected papers will be on a weighted scoring scale based on 1) Relevancy to NIDA, 2) Accessibility to Technology, 3) Novelty, and 4) Stage of Development.
Join Us
If you are interested in joining or would like to recommend a new member (Note: PostBacs may be considered with a strong recommendation), please reach out to Brandon Harvey. We are striving for representation from preclinical and clinical research.
Current Committee Members
Tom Stalnaker
Behavioral Neurophysiology Neuroscience Section
Cellular and Neurocomputational Systems Branch
Active (Member – 2023-Present)
Background: Tom Stalnaker is a staff scientist in Geoff Schoenbaum’s lab at NIDA. His scientific interests include the neural bases of learning, decision-making, and predictions. He also enjoys supporting the ideas and projects of others in the lab in a variety of ways. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in biological psychology.
Joshua Hinkle
Molecular Mechanisms of Cellular Stress and Inflammation Section
Integrative Neuroscience Research Branch
Active (Member – 2023-Present)
Josh Hinkle completed his PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Rochester, NY and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Brandon Harvey’s lab. His research focuses on calcium dynamics and endoplasmic reticulum receptor trafficking in response to ER stress and disease.
Nicholas Beacher
Neural Engineering Unit
Behavioral Neuroscience Research Branch
Active (Member – 2023-Present)
Nicholas Beacher, Ph.D. joined Dr. Da-Ting Lin’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow in 2020 in the Behavioral Neuroscience Research Branch of NIDA IRP. Nicholas earned his Ph.D. in Psychology: Behavioral & Systems Neuroscience at Rutgers University and studied in vivo electrophysiology. His current research uses custom miniaturized head-mounted microscopes (MiniScopes) to explore in vivo calcium activity in the Nucleus Accumbens (NAc) of rats self-administering rewards under escalating ‘effort’ conditions.
Agnieszka Sulima
Drug Design and Synthesis Section
Molecular Targets and Medications Discovery Branch
Active (Member – 2023-Present)
Agnieszka Sulima is a Staff Scientist in the Drug Design and Synthesis Section where she applies synthetic and medicinal chemistry as well as pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic principles in the design and synthesis of small molecules with drug-like properties. Her research is focused on the synthesis of ligands interacting with the central nervous system, particularly opioid receptor ligands associated with analgesia and opioid use disorder.
Tingting Liu
Technology and Translational Research Unit
Translational Addiction Medicine Branch
Active (Member – 2023-Present)
Tingting Liu is currently a Postdoctoral researcher at NIDA. Her research focuses on social relationships, risk-taking, and mental health. She uses interdisciplinary approaches from psychology, neuroscience, and data science to fill gaps in understanding how social connections’ structure, function, and quality impact affective disorders, substance use, and risky behavior. In addition to her research, Dr. Liu is also a fellow at the Center on Compulsive Behaviors at the NIH. She earned her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan in 2020.
Reinis Svarcbahs
Molecular Mechanisms of Cellular Stress and Inflammation Section
Integrative Neuroscience Research Branch
Active (Member – 2022-Present)
Reinis got his doctoral degree at the University of Helsinki with a focus on neuroscience and neuropharmacology. His scientific interests are in neurodegeneration and how different insults affect neuronal survival. He joined NIDA as a visiting postdoctoral fellow under Dr. Harvey researching ER stress role and exodosis phenomenon on neuronal survival.
Emily Wires
Molecular Mechanisms of Cellular Stress and Inflammation Section
Integrative Neuroscience Research Branch
Active (Member – 2022-Present)
Dr. Emily Wires is a Research Fellow in the Molecular Mechanisms of Cellular Stress and Inflammation Section, where her research focuses on cellular stress and calcium dysregulation. She is interested in identifying clinical biomarkers to assess disease progression and therapeutic intervention. Additionally, she mentors young scientists and serves on institutional committees. Dr. Wires earned her Ph.D. in toxicology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
Past Committee Members
Brenton Laing
Neuronal Circuits and Behavior Section
Cellular and Neurocomputational Systems Branch
Active (Member – 2023-Present)
Atul Daiwile
Molecular Neuropsychiatry Research Section
Molecular Neuropsychiatry Research Branch
Alumni (Member – 2022-2023)
Dr. Daiwile completed his Ph.D. in 2017 from India and in 2018 he joined NIDA as Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow. Currently Dr. Daiwile research work focus on to identify sex difference in Methamphetamine use disorder.
Katherine Savell
Neuronal Ensembles in Drug Addiction Section
Behavioral Neuroscience Research Branch
Alumni (Member – 2022-2023)
Katherine Savell, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Bruce Hope’s lab in the Behavioral Neuroscience Research Branch of the National Institute on Drug Abuse Intramural Research Program. She has a Ph.D. in Genetics, Genomics, and Bioinformatics, with a focus in neuroscience, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research at NIDA IRP focuses on how drug associations are maintained in the brain and developing new techniques for studying molecular processes with improved specificity.
Kathleen Trychta
Molecular Mechanisms of Cellular Stress and Inflammation Section
Integrative Neuroscience Research Branch
Alumni (Member – 2022-2022)
Albert Burgess-Hull
Real World Assessment, Prediction, and Treatment Unit
Translational Addiction Medicine Branch
Alumni (Member – 2022-2022)
