People

Dr. Xu is a Professor of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and holds a position as Staff Psychiatrist at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System. Her research is dedicated to exploring the complex interactions between stress and the epigenome, aiming to uncover how these interactions contribute to the development of stress-related symptoms and disorders such as substance use. This important work has led Dr. Xu to investigate a broad spectrum of behavioral and medical conditions in diverse populations. Dr. Xu is engaged in the field of social epigenomics that helps us understanding the biological underpinnings of the effects of social environments on health.

Dr. Jennifer Blackburn received her PhD from the Medway School of Pharmacy at the Universities of Kent and Greenwich in 2017. Her research focuses on the role of immune activation and inflammation in the response to therapeutic and recreational drugs. Currently she is studying the cell-type specific mechanisms underpinning cannabis anti-inflammatory effects and how HIV-infection impacts cannabis’s effect on the immune system.

I am passionate about bioinformatics, with current research focused on analyzing SIV-related single-cell multi-omics datasets, including RNA and ATAC data. I am also working with DNA methylation data to explore regulatory mechanisms. My work involves integrating diverse data types to uncover cell-type–specific patterns and biological insights.

My research focuses on applying bioinformatics approaches to investigate genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenetic alterations associated with human diseases and phenotypic variation. Currently, I am conducting projects that integrate single-cell multi-omics data to delineate cell type–specific transcriptomic and epigenomic changes in immune cells in response to chronic cannabis use and acute THC administration.

Amir Valizadeh earned his MD from Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2019. His research integrates computational biology, machine learning, and clinical expertise, with a focus on multi-omics integration, epigenomic profiling, and biomarker discovery in psychiatry and immunology. Currently, as a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale School of Medicine and VA Connecticut Healthcare System, he is exploring transcriptomic alterations in SIV/HIV infection and leveraging AI for precision diagnostics, such as DNA methylation-based prediction of ketamine response in PTSD.