Elizabeth V. Goldfarb, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry, has been recognized by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) as a 2024 Klerman Prize Honorable Mention award recipient.
The Klerman Prize is named for Gerald Klerman, MD, whose legacy as a researcher, teacher, physician, and administrator has indelibly influenced neuropsychiatry.
Goldfarb was honored at a ceremony July 26 in New York City, where she and other recipients were presented with their awards.
“The 2024 Klerman … prize winners are being recognized for their significant findings related to suicide prevention, PTSD, substance-use disorders, autism, brain biology, and therapeutic drug development,” said Jeffrey Borenstein, MD, president and CEO of BBRF. “Their important work is advancing the development of diagnostic tools, the identification of effective and targeted treatments, and paving the way toward prevention of mental illness.”
The goal of Goldfarb’s lab at Yale is to understand how stress changes the way we remember our lives and the consequences of these memories for later behavior. Her research takes a translational cognitive neuroscience approach that combines experimental tasks that measure different types of memories, analyses of brain responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging, and assessments of physiological responses and real-world behavior.
The aim of her work is to identify memory markers of resilient responses to trauma and reveal targets for memory-related therapeutic interventions.
Goldfarb’s selection was made by the BBRF Scientific Council comprised of 192 pre-eminent mental health researchers.
Since its founding in 1987, BBRF has awarded more than $450 million to more than 5,400 scientists around the world.