Adriene M. Beltz, Ph.D.
The goal of Dr. Adriene Beltz's research is to develop and apply novel quantitative approaches in order to reveal the ways in which the brain mediates biological and environmental influences on behavioral sex differences, such as substance use, across development. To achieve this goal, she works with data from children, adolescents, and young adults collected through multiple methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, salivary hormones, observations of social interactions, daily diaries, cognitive tests, and online self-reports.
Dr. Beltz work has been funded by NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences mechanisms and by the American Psychological Foundation. In addition, she has been named an Association for Psychological Science Rising Star, and she has received the Brenda Milner Award from the American Psychological Association (Division 6) and a New Investigator Award from the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology.
Despite her junior status, Dr. Beltz is already an associate editor for a top-tier methodology journal (Multivariate Behavioral Research), and she is on three editorial boards (Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, Journal for Research on Adolescence, and Hormones and Behavior), and has ongoing collaborations with other faculty on the T32 training grant. Dr. Beltz’s expertise in integrating innovative methods with substantive research questions puts her in a unique, interdisciplinary position to mentor early career scholars.
Lora M. Cope, Ph.D.
Dr. Lora Cope is a former T32 postdoctoral fellow (2015-2016) mentored by Drs. Mary Heitzeg and Robert Zucker. She was trained in cognitive neuroimaging at the University of New Mexico Department of Psychology and Mind Research Network. Her primary research focus is on the neurobiological correlates of addiction risk and consequences in youth. She has published 28 manuscripts in total (she is first author on 17), including a high-profile paper in JAMA Psychiatry. Dr. Cope joined the UM Addiction Center faculty in 2017 as Research Assistant Professor. Dr. Cope studies the neurobiological-, behavioral-, and personality-based correlates of risk for transition to compulsive substance use in adolescents and emerging adults.
Lara Coughin, Ph.D.
Dr. Coughlin is a former T-32 fellow whose research focuses on developing, adapting, and implementing interventions to improve outcomes for those with substance use disorders based on behavioral economic frameworks. Her research aims to improve reach and access to empirically-based substance use prevention and treatment, especially in historically underserved populations. Her ongoing work includes projects focused on improving outcomes for people who use alcohol, cannabis and tobacco using adaptive and remotely-delivered (e.g., text, phone, app) interventions.
Anne C. Fernandez, Ph.D.
Dr. Anne Fernandez is committed to high-quality of mentorship for post-doctoral fellows in this program, already demonstrating these skills mentoring several fellows in clinical research and career development over the past year. She has over 6 years of post-graduate experience in research targeting substance use behaviors among adults, particularly those with co-morbid medical conditions. Her work developing alcohol treatments for elective surgical patients and liver disease patients is bringing alcohol treatment to overlooked areas of healthcare.
Clinically, Dr. Fernandez offers extensive experience providing clinical interventions and supervision in motivational interviewing, cognitive behavioral therapy for addiction, and mindfulness-based relapse prevention. Her active grants include a K23 career development award to develop an intervention for pre-operative alcohol use and a precision health award to predict opioid use after surgery. These awards will improve identification of patients with addictive behaviors and develop interventions that fit within the surgical episode of care.
Jason E. Goldstick, Ph.D.
Dr. Jason E. Goldsick is Research Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of the Statistics & Methods Core of the University of Michigan Injury Prevention Center. Trained as a statistician, Dr. Goldstick is a quantitative substance use and violence researcher, and is currently PI or Co-I on nine substance-use-related projects. His primary research interests focus on three areas: a) social epidemiology of substance use in violence, with particular focus on spatial and longitudinal trends in those factors, and how spatially and temporally proximate conditions modulate risk factor effects; b) prospective clinical prediction of future outcomes, such as substance use disorder or violent injury; and c) evaluating substance use and violence intervention effects, with particular focus on multi-behavioral interventions and treatment effect mediators and moderators. He currently has an R03 from NIAAA, and is a Co-Investigator on numerous other grants.
Dr. Goldstick has been a quantitative mentor to several T32 postdoctoral fellows and one graduate student, and has been the primary mentor to one postdoctoral fellow, and two students. As a mentoring faculty member in the T32 training program, he offers quantitative and substance mentoring to fellows as needed.
Jillian E. Hardee, Ph.D.
Dr. Jillian E. Hardee is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. She was trained in neuroscience at West Virginia University, and was formerly a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, mentored by Drs. Heitzeg and Zucker. Her primary research focus is on developmental neuroimaging targeted at investigating behavioral risk factors for alcohol and other substance use, as well as sex differences in the risk for and initiation of alcohol use. This research began with her work as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Heitzeg’s lab and was partially supported by an independent grant from the Michigan Institute for Clinical & Health Research Postdoctoral Translational Scholars Program titled, “Neural-based sex differences in young adult problem drinkers: a human fMRI study”.
Dr. Hardee recieved a NIAAA-funded K01 award, "Sex differences in the neural mechanisms of brief interventions for binge drinking”. Her other main research interests include the effects of marijuana in the brain, including the risk and consequences of marijuana use on executive control functions, as well as the association between addictive-like eating and brain function. She has been active in mentoring undergraduate and graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows.
Lewei (Allison) Lin M.D., M.S.
Dr. Allison Lin is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, an addiction psychiatrist at the Ann Arbor VA, and a Research Investigator at the VA HSR&D Center for Clinical Management Research. She will participate in the mentorship of post-doctoral fellows in this training program, providing addiction health services research mentorship informed by clinical experiences in addiction treatment. Dr. Lin graduated from MIT with a BS in Economics and Chemical Engineering, received her MD from Yale, and completed her psychiatry residency and addiction psychiatry clinical and research fellowship at the Addiction Center at University of Michigan.
Dr. Lin's research focuses on understanding gaps in access and quality of substance use disorder treatment in order to inform interventions to improve care delivery and outcomes for clinical populations with substance use disorders. She collaborates with numerous other researchers within the Addiction Center and works on several studies developing and evaluating psychosocial interventions to improve outcomes for patients with opioid and other substance use disorders. Her work focuses on integrating interventions within clinical settings including primary care and substance use disorder treatment programs.
After Dr. Lin’s addiction fellowship training at University of Michigan, she successfully obtained a VA Career Development Award focusing on developing and testing a telemedicine model to expand access to medication treatment for patients with opioid use disorder and examining the treatment landscape using electronic health record data to understand where to prioritize future telehealth implementation.
Meghan Martz, Ph.D.
Dr. Martz is Research Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Addiction Center within the Department of Psychiatry. Her research focuses on psychosocial and neural factors associated with substance use risk and resilience among adolescents and young adults. Using multidisciplinary methods, Dr. Martz has examined both population-level survey data from the Monitoring the Future study and is currently working with fMRI data from the Michigan Longitudinal Study and the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. Dr. Martz received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan and completed a pre-doctoral fellowship with NIDA’s Substance Abuse Interdisciplinary Training Program. Prior to completing her PhD, Dr. Martz received a MSW from the University of Chicago and a BS in Psychology with a minor in Human Development and Family Studies from Indiana University.
Jonathan D. Morrow, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Jonathan D. Morrow is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry. His research interest is in delineating the basic neurobiology that underlies motivated behavior. He uses individual differences in Pavlovian conditioned approach behavior in animals to measure a type of cue-reactivity that can predispose to multiple psychiatric comorbidities, including addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ongoing projects in Dr. Morrow’s lab include characterizing the psychological properties of cue-reactivity, identifying molecular and circuit-based mechanisms that determine an individual’s Pavlovian learning style, and identifying interventions that can switch individuals from vulnerable to resilient phenotypes. In addition, he is now creating Pavlovian conditioned approach tasks for human subjects so that this research can be used in longitudinal and neuroimaging studies of clinical populations. These projects provide ideal opportunities for mentoring trainees in alcoholism and other addiction-related research. Dr. Morrow treats substance abuse patients in clinic one day per week, and evaluates patients with residents and medical students.
As part of his research, Dr. Morrow has served as the primary advisor for fifteen undergraduates, two University of Michigan graduate students, and one postdoctoral fellow. He has also served as a secondary advisor for an MD-PhD student at Wayne State University, two University of Michigan graduate students, and one former T32 postdoctoral fellow (Lora Cope, Ph.D.). His research program can be an excellent vehicle for fostering the professional development of addiction researchers and help trainees take full advantage of the opportunities provided at UM.
Alexander S. Weigard, Ph.D.
Alexander Weigard is Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Addiction Center in the Department of Psychiatry and a former T32 postdoctoral fellow. He is interested in using computational and network modeling methods to better characterize cognitive and neural risk factors for the development of attention problems and substance use disorders. He hopes to integrate this work with machine learning to enhance the real-world prediction of problematic substance use, psychopathology and associated outcomes.
Golfo K. Tzilos Wernette, Ph.D.
Dr. Golfo K. Tzilos Wernette is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and the Department of Psychiatry. She is a licensed clinical psychologist at the Ypsilanti Health Center where she provides short-term psychological intervention to adults in the community seeking primary care services. She serves as a mentor and teaches postdoctoral fellows, residents, and medical students in the area of screening and brief intervention for alcohol/drug use in primary care. She completed a T32 postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University, where she was also a research faculty member.
Dr. Tzilos clinical research interests include technology-delivered approaches for health promotion and the reduction of health risk behaviors (e.g., alcohol/drug use, STIs/HIV risk behaviors) among vulnerable populations. Her current NIH-funded work is focused on screening and brief motivational interventions that target these health risks in pregnant/perinatal women and in emerging adults, including a recent R01 award to test a brief, computer-delivered intervention to reduce alcohol use and other health risks during pregnancy. She was a secondary co-mentor to former T32 postdoc fellow, Lara Coughlin, Ph.D.
