Shivani Bhatt, PhD, has been named a travel awardee for the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) Annual Meeting in December.
Bhatt is an MD-PhD candidate investigating the neural stress and immune systems in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) using Positron Emission Tomography (PET) in the laboratory of Kelly Cosgrove, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, and of Neuroscience.
Bhatt will present work from her dissertation under Cosgrove, recently published in Nature Communications, using PET to image the brain glucocorticoid stress system in PTSD, which builds on the investigation of the neuroimmune system in PTSD.
This year’s ACNP annual meeting, which was originally scheduled to be held in Phoenix, Arizona from Dec. 6-9, will now be hosted virtually due to concerns related to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Bhatt’s in-person travel award benefits will be extended to attend the 2021 annual meeting from Dec. 5-8 at the San Juan Convention Center in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Bhatt’s research projects reflect her clinical interests in stress-related psychiatric disorders including PTSD and addiction, and their intersections with chronic medical illness in the primary care setting. Both have been informed by her experience working as a student provider with underserved populations in Wednesday Evening Clinic, HAVEN Free Clinic, and Yale Refugee Clinic for 3 years. Additionally, Bhatt has been involved in shaping medical school curriculum around early professional identification, structural determinants of health, and mental health and burnout in medicine, and is part of current leadership efforts in the Yale MD-PhD Program's Committee on Diversity and Inclusion.