Kartik Pattabiraman, MD, PhD, a member of the Albert J. Solnit Integrated Training Program at Yale, has been recognized with a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Outstanding Resident Award.
The award program was introduced to the psychiatry residency training community over 30 years ago to recognize residents with outstanding research and academic potential. Psychiatry residency directors nominate one PGY-2 resident in their program. The nominee completes an application, including a description of their research.
Pattabiraman will receive the award in September at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Md. The two-day program includes a tour of the NIH intramural campus and facilities, talks by NIMH investigators, and meetings with NIMH leadership. Award recipients may also participate in poster sessions.
Pattabiraman works in the laboratory of Nenad Sestan MD, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience, of Comparative Medicine, of Genetics and of Psychiatry at Yale. His research interest centers on understanding the pathophysiology of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
Multiple laboratories, including the Sestan laboratory, have identified an enrichment of ASD alleles in the human mid-fetal frontal cortex. However, translating these findings into clinical interventions requires a deeper understanding of the developmental processes occurring during mid-fetal cortical development.
Pattabiraman is specifically interested in the specification of sub-divisions of the pre-frontal cortex, and identifying the associated gene regulatory pathways. He plans to further interrogate these pathways in model systems including mouse lines and organoids.
He is also working to characterize the human subplate, a region of the developing cerebral cortex that is expanded in primates and implicated in ASD
He is entering his third year in the Solnit Integrated Training Program, which provides clinical experiences to build knowledge and skills necessary to practice in all sectors of psychiatry, including child, adolescent, and adult psychiatry.