Emma Childs

Email Address: echilds@uic.edu
College: Medicine Department: Psychiatry
Title: Associate Professor
Office: 1601 W Taylor St Rm 414 Phone: 3123552726
Webpage: https://happy.lab.uic.edu/
Participating in the Chancellor’s Undergraduate Research Awards program: Yes

Research Interest:
Addiction processes, behavioral pharmacology, drug effects (subjective, behavioral, physiological), individual differences, translational models.

Our research examines the factors that contribute to substance abuse and dependence in healthy human volunteers with some previous recreational drug experience. For example, genetic, personality, environmental (including stress) and physiological (including sex) factors can all influence an individual’s risk to develop a substance use disorder. Ongoing projects include:
1) Reward conditioning, extinction and reinstatement
2) Individual differences in subjective responses to alcohol
3) The influence of synthetic ovarian hormones on alcohol and methamphetamine effects.
3) A human translational model of the rodent locomotor response to novelty test.

Students have the opportunity to gain experience in human laboratory procedures including recruitment, screening, behavioral testing and data collection, database management (RedCap, Exccel), data analysis, data presentation (e.g., posters), and manuscript preparation (assisting with literature searches, compiling graphs and tables). Interested students will also have the opportunity to advance their scientific writing skills.

Minimum time commitment in hours per week: 8

Qualifications of a Student:
GPA>3, detail-oriented, professional, punctual, reliable, committed. Good social skills required if conducting behavioral research with study participants. Prior lab experience is not necessary.

Students are expected to use the lab calendar to schedule their time, to keep to their schedule (especially when testing subjects), give ample notice about rescheduling, and work on laboratory projects while in the lab.

Brief Summary of what is expected from the student:
You will help administer and perform research-related tasks, including subject recruitment, scheduling, data collection, data processing and analysis. There is the opportunity to assist in preparation of posters and publications, depending on interest, capability, and willingness.

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