Gilbert H. Glaser Professor of Neurology; Division Chief, Neurological Infections & Global Neurology; Co-Director, Yale Center for Brain & Mind Health; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Our Team
COVID Mind Study Leadership Team
Assistant Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases); Assistant Professor, Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases
COVID Mind Study Yale Collaborators & Advisors
Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and of Biomedical Engineering; Director of Graduate Studies, Biomedical Engineering
Richard E. Carson received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1983 in Biomathematics. From that time on, he has focused his research on the development and application of mathematical techniques for the study of human beings and non-human primates with Positron Emission Tomography (PET), a noninvasive imaging technology that uses radiopharmaceuticals to trace in vivo physiology and pharmacology. From 1983 until 2005, Dr. Carson was an integral part of the PET program at the National Institutes of Health, rising to the rank of Senior Scientist. In 2005, Dr. Carson joined the faculty of Yale University as Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Diagnostic Radiology. He was Director of the Yale PET Center from 2007 to 2022, a state-of-the-art facility focused on quantitative PET techniques using novel radiopharmaceuticals. Dr. Carson is also Director of Graduate Studies in Biomedical Engineering.... Professor of Psychiatry and of Neuroscience and of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging; Co-Director of the T32 Translational Alcohol Research Program, Psychiatry and Public Health
Dr. Cosgrove uses neuroreceptor imaging techniques such as PET to gain insights into the brains of people with substance use and other stress-related disorders. Trained as a clinical psychologist who worked with individuals managing alcohol and drug use disorders, Dr. Cosgrove transitioned to conducting research in order to inform the treatment of substance use disorders. Her laboratory develops and applies innovative brain imaging paradigms to track changes in critical neurochemicals over time, to identify treatment targets for psychiatric disorders, and to examine individual and sex and gender differences.Professor of Psychiatry; Director, Molecular Imaging Program, NCPTSD, VA; Director, Mood, Anxiety, and Cognitive Sciences Division
Irina Esterlis is a clinical neuropsychologist and neuroreceptor imager with extensive training in the application of SPECT and PET to the study of mood, trauma, suicide, and comorbid disorders. Dr. Esterlis has developed two novel paradigms to interrogate both the acetylcholine and glutamatergic systems in vivo in human. Her lab was also the first to show ketamine-induced changes in human volunteers in vivo. She has received awards from Society of Nuclear Medicine, American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Society for Biological Psychiatry, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Esterlis' current work includes the study of the metabotropic glutamatergic receptor involvement in bipolar depression and suicide, and synaptic alterations associated with depression, aging, and suicidality. The lab has expanded to add in vivo preclinical work to elucidate... Associate Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine); Director, Operations Core, Yale Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center; Student Thesis Chair, Internal Medicine
Dr. Ferrante is an Associate Professor in Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine and a Core Director at the Yale Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center. Her research program, funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIH/NIA), is centered at the interface of critical care medicine and geriatrics, with the overarching goal of understanding and improving the functional outcomes of critically ill older adults. Dr. Ferrante’s work has been recognized most recently with the Jo Rae Wright Award for Outstanding Science (2023) from the American Thoracic Society (ATS), where she also served as Chair of the Critical Care Program Committee for the ATS 2024 International Conference. Clinically, Dr. Ferrante is an attending physician in the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Yale-New Haven Hospital and in the Winchester Center for Lung Disease. Active projects: 1.... Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and of Neurology; Medical Director, Dementia and Behavioral Neurology, Neurology
Dr. Fesharaki is currently a neuropsychiatrist, as well as a basic neuroscience researcher focusing on Traumatic Brain Injury and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. He has a diverse training background, which include a mixture of clinical adult psychiatry, clinical behavioral neurology/neuropsychiatry and bench neuroscience skills. This combination of aforementioned skills has in turn given him a unique vantage point to have the opportunity to apply what he continues to learn in the laboratory to enrich his clinical treatment. His current research focus is to develop a robust animal model of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), as well as investigation of potential treatment modalities. He is also involved in a collaborative research study investigating synaptic density alterations in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD).Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging; Medical Director, Magnetic Resonance Research Center
Associate Professor Adjunct; Associate Director of Imaging, Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
Ansel obtained his Ph.D. in Medical Physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2014. His research program features core areas of translational characterization of novel PET radiotracers, developing new imaging paradigms to improve quantification of brain neurobiology, and human neuroimaging research studying mechanisms underlying diverse psychiatric conditions. Research efforts are complemented by didactic activities lecturing at Yale and individual mentoring of trainees. Current projects include characterizing novel PET radiotracers of immune-related targets in the brain; developing novel imaging paradigms to study acute alcohol effects on neuroimmune and glutamate systems; assessment of dopamine release from smoked cannabis; method development for analyzing multimodal imaging data from fMRI-PET or PET-PET datasets; and implementing... Anthony N Brady Professor of Pathology; Co-Director of Graduate Studies, Computational Biology and Biomedical Informatics
Dr. Steven Kleinstein is a computational immunologist with a combination of big data analysis and immunology domain expertise. His research interests include both developing new computational methods and applying these methods to study human immune responses. Dr. Kleinstein received a B.A.S. in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton University. He is currently Professor of Pathology (with a secondary appointment in Immunobiology) at the Yale School of Medicine, and a member of the Interdepartmental Program in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (CBB), and the Human and Translational Immunology Program. Specific areas of research focus include:High-throughput single-cell B cell receptor (BCR) repertoire profiling (AIRR-seq, Rep-seq, scRNA-seq+VDJ)Multi-omic immune signatures of human infection and... Assistant Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine); Associate Director, Winchester Center for Lung Disease, Pulmonary - PCCM - Critical Care
Assistant Professor
Dr. Lindsay McAlpine is a neuroimmunologist in Division of Neurological Infections and Global Neurology at the Yale University School of Medicine. She founded the NeuroCOVID Clinic at Yale in October 2020 and now directs the clinic. She sees patients with neurologic issues related to Long COVID and patients with multiple sclerosis and autoimmune disorders of the nervous system. She is an investigator in the COVID Mind Study at Yale, and her research interests are related to the pathophysiology of neurologic symptoms after COVID-19 using several modalities, including MRI.Professor of Psychiatry and of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences); Director, Translational Psychiatric Epidemiology Laboratory, Clinical Neurosciences Division, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD
Robert H. Pietrzak completed a B.A. in Psychology at Clark University, and M.P.H. in Epidemiology and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with specialization in Clinical Neuropsychology at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Pietrzak is Director of the Translational Psychiatric Epidemiology Laboratory in the Clinical Neurosciences Division of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD and Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine and Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences) at Yale School of Public Health. His primary research interests include the psychosocial and genetic epidemiology of traumatic stress and resilience across the lifespan; dimensional models of stress-related psychopathology; and the effect of stress on cognition.Associate Professor Term; Medical Director, Winchester Center for Lung Disease, Winchester Center for Lung Disease
Dr. Possick attended Yale University School of Medicine and continued at Yale to complete both a residency in Internal Medicine in 2005 as well as a fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in 2008. She is the Medical Director of the Winchester Center for Lung Disease and leads the Comprehensive Pulmonary Medicine Program, which forms the foundation of the Winchester Center's pulmonary consultation practice. She is also a member of the multidisciplinary Thoracic Oncology Program at Smilow Cancer Hospital, focusing on treatment-related complications and pulmonary comorbidities in patients not only with lung cancer, but with other solid tumor malignancies as well. In 2020, she founded the Post-COVID Recovery Program, which provided evaluation and support for survivors of SARS-CoV-2 infection with persistent respiratory symptoms or complications through... Associate Professor of Cardiology and Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Chronic Diseases); Director, Preventive Cardiovascular Health Program; Associate Director, Yale Medicine Population Health
Dr. Erica S. Spatz, MD, MHS is a cardiologist and clinical investigator at the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE). Her clinical and research interests include the development of individualized approaches to preventing and managing cardiovascular disease, along with tools to help patients become more active in their healthcare decisions.Professor of Psychiatry; Director, STEP Program; Fellow, Davenport College
Dr. Srihari's scholarly focus is on improving the outcomes of early course schizophrenia spectrum disorders. His research interests span the translational continuum from studies of etiology and pathophysiology to interventions on clinical samples, to service level innovations. As Director of the STEP Program, he leads activities that connect this research to the missions of delivering a model service (the STEP Clinic), disseminating clinical best practices (via Learning Health Networks), education and workforce development and influencing policies that support the public health mission of early Intervention for schizophrenia spectrum disorders. In his curricular work, he has led the development and implementation of an Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) based approach to enabling psychiatrists in training to ask, access, appraise and apply the best available scientific evidence to their...
COVID Mind Study External Collaborators & Advisors
Christopher Bartley, MD, PhD - Psychiatry (UCSF)
Magnus Gisslen, MD, PhD - Infectious diseases/biomarkers (University of Gothenburg)
Samuel Pleasure, MD, PhD - Neurology (UCSF)
Richard W. Price, MD - Neurovirology (UCSF)
Leah Rubin, MA, MPH, PhD - Neuropsychology (Johns Hopkins University)
Michael Wilson, MD - Neurology (UCSF)
COVID Mind Study Team
Research Assistant 3 MS/ Neuroinfectious Disease
Jen joined the Spudich Lab in 2015 and serves in dual roles as the Program Manager for Dr. Spudich's Lab at Yale and as Data Manager for SEARCH 10. She graduated from Quinnipiac University, where she studied Medical Technology, Molecular Virology, and Microbiology, and then joined Yale, building her specialization in HIV and HCV translational research. She worked with Dr. Michael Kozal of the Infectious Diseases Department for 17 years, studying HIV drug resistance and investigating the use of various methodologies, including ultra-deep sequencing, in detecting low-abundance resistant viral variants.