Monsheel Sonia Sodhi

The mission of our laboratory is to discover the molecular pathways that lead to suicide and related psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia and major depression. Suicide is an escalating medical problem that occurs every 14 minutes in the United States. Risk factors for suicide include family history and a primary diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder, and therefore our work is focused on investigations of genes that may create vulnerability to psychiatric disorders. Through investigations of postmortem brain from human subjects,animal models and cell culture, we hope to identify new targets for the development of improved drug treatments for these devastating disorders. Our students have been successful in their applications to graduate school (medicine, pharmacy and Ph.D. programs) in addition to receiving awards for the research conducted for their research projects. For example, one of our previous undergraduate students recently won a travel award to present her work at the Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego in 2013, while another student won a prize for his poster at a scientific meeting.