From Basic Science to Clinical Research: A Neuroscientist’s Journey

After teaching high school biology for several years, Joanne Weinberg entered a doctoral program in neuroscience as the oldest student in the class. Research opportunities and fortuitous connections with people along her path led her from basic studies on the effects of early life experience and stress on brain and biological development to a focus on the adverse effects of prenatal exposure to alcohol, using rodent models to examine alcohol’s impact from the prenatal period through adulthood. Her latest research, part of the NIH Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (CIFASD), investigates alcohol-induced effects on immune profiles of pregnant women and on immune function and health of children across the lifespan, a critical but understudied area in the FASD field.