The Center for Neuroinflammation and Cardiometabolic Diseases would like to welcome Dr. Jessica Bolton, Ph.D., who will join GSU in the Spring of 2021. Dr. Bolton comes to us from the University of California-Irvine where she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Lab of Dr. Tallie Z. Baram.
Originally from Dallas, Texas, Dr. Bolton obtained her B.S. in Animal Behavior from Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX in 2010. She is a psychoneuroimmunologist by training, having earned her Ph.D. from the Psychology & Neuroscience Ph.D. program at Duke University while working in Dr. Staci Bilbo’s Lab. What is Psychoneuroimmunology you ask. It’s the study of how the nervous and immune systems interact, often in the context of mental health. Dr. Bolton is particularly interested in how early-life experiences can “program” children for risk or resilience to mental disorders later in life.
In July of 2015, Dr. Bolton began her postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Tallie Z. Baram’s lab at USC-Irvine. She is currently studying the role of microglia, the resident immune cells of the brain, in sculpting stress-sensitive neural circuitry following early-life adversity during sensitive periods of development. To do so, she employs cutting-edge technologies, such as live 2-photon imaging of microglia-neuron interactions in the hypothalamus from dual-reporter transgenic mice. Recently, her work in the Baram lab has been awarded with funding by a NARSAD Young Investigator Grant and an NIMH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Grant.
CNCD is very excited to have Dr. Bolton. For more info on her work, you can visit her website here: http://www.jessicalynnbolton.com/home