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 by COB February 10th. We are striving for representation from preclinical and clinical research.
Current Committee Members
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.
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)