INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF ASTROCYTE-NEURONAL METABOLIC COUPLING IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHRONIC PAIN - DR. GIANNINA DESCALZI

Dr. Giannina Descalzi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, at the Ontario Veterinary College, in the University of Guelph. Their research focuses on the intersection of pain and emotion, investigating the molecular mechanisms involved in chronic pain development and mental health disorders. Dr. Descalzi’s methods bridge animal models of chronic pain with molecular biology and systems neuroscience to enhance our understanding of chronic pain, mental health, and circuit-wide gene function. Dr. Descalzi holds a doctorate in Neuroscience from the University of Toronto, and completed a Banting postdoctoral fellowship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, and a second postdoctoral fellowship at NYU. Dr. Descalzi’s work is has been funded through NARSAD Young Investigator Grants, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Azrieli Foundation, and the Canadian Pain Society’s Early Career Investigator Pain Research Grant.