The overall goal of my research is centered on elucidating the genetic, epigenetic and neurobiological mechanisms underlying neural signaling and motivated behaviors that characterize drug addiction and related psychiatric co-morbidity, such as depression. As such, I have extensive expertise in preclinical models focused on the neurobiology of drug dependence, animal models/behavior, pharmacology/pharmacokinetics, epigenetics/genetics, and extracellular vesicle signaling. Our studies span a variety of levels across behavior (intravenous self-administration in mice and rats, vapor self-administration in mice and rats, depression-and anxiety-associated behaviors, prepulse inhibition, and learning/memory), genetic manipulations (viral gene modifications, transgenic models, chemicogenetics), tissue analysis (immunohistochemistry, confocal microscopy, expansion microscopy, super-resolution microscopy), slice electrophysiology, in vitro cell culture, molecular techniques (extracellular vesicle analysis, Western blotting), RNA transcriptomics, and proteomics. By using these methods, we seek to more clearly define the specific role of gene expression modulators, pathways, neurotransmitters and receptors involved in the effects of psychiatric symptomology and disorders. Finally, through several collaborations with medicinal chemists in the US and Europe, we conduct pre-clinical testing of novel compounds as we seek to derive more efficacious therapeutic treatments.