Mock Study Section Reviewers
Laramie Smith, PhD
Assistant ProfessorDivision of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health
UC San Diego
lrs003@ucsd.edu
Dr. Laramie Smith is an assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. She earned her doctorate from the University of Connecticut as a NIMH-funded F31 pre-doctoral scholar and completed her postdoctoral training as a NIDA-funded T32 postdoctoral fellow in Substance Use, HIV, and related infections.
Dr. Smith has 15 years’ collaborative research experience with public health and community partners. As a social psychologist, she applies social and behavioral theory, from a public health perspective, to examine individual and socio-structural contexts (e.g. stigma, substance use, social network characteristics) implicated in improving health equity among people living with HIV (PLWH) and substance-involved communities. Her work aims to advance theoretical contributions to HIV science and reduce HIV disparities.
More recently her NIDA-funded community-engaged research has focused on improving engagement in the HIV prevention and care continuums for substance-using and other medically vulnerable key populations in Mexico (persons who inject drugs or engage in sex work, and men who have sex with men [MSM]), and syndemic-affected cis and transgender women in the U.S. Across this body of work, she aims to identify ways intersectional stigma, discrimination, and other sociostructural factors (e.g. violence, social support, transportation- and access-related barriers) can be intervened on to improve HIV prevention and treatment environments in resource-constrained settings.
Carla Marienfeld, MD
Clinical Professor, PsychiatryUC San Diego
cmarienfeld@ucsd.edu
Carla Marienfeld, MD, is a board-certified addiction psychiatrist and Associate Professor at the University of California, San Diego who supports recovery in a harm-reduction approach through therapy, motivational interviewing, and medication treatment. Her research looks at health outcomes for individuals with substance use disorders, and she published a book Motivational Interviewing for Clinical Practice.
She has been highly involved in education of colleagues and trainees about addiction psychiatry and effective interventions including buprenorphine treatment and motivational interviewing, and she is the fellowship director for the UCSD Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship. Dr. Marienfeld completed a fellowship in addiction psychiatry and residency training in psychiatry at Yale. During her residency, she was chief resident of psychiatry and founded (and later led) the Yale Global Mental Health Program. She earned a medical degree with honors from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston
María Luisa Zúñiga, PhD
ProfessorCo-Director, Joint Doctoral Program in Interdisciplinary Research on Substance Use
SDSU School of Social Work
mlzuniga@sdsu.edu
Dr. Zúñiga is a Professor in the School of Social Work at San Diego State University (SDSU) and Associate Adjunct Professor in the Division of Global Public Health and Department of Pediatrics, UC San Diego (UCSD). She serves as the Campus Director of the SDSU-UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Interdisciplinary Research on Substance Use.
Dr. Zúñiga is an epidemiologist who conducts transnational and Community-Based Participatory Research to study the intersection of alcohol and drug use, mental health, TB/HIV and sexual risk behaviors in order to reduce problems that contribute to poor health. She has worked extensively with communities in the U.S.-Mexico border region as well as Mexican transnational and domestic migrants and their families in Mexico. Her ongoing research is designed to understand and improve health care engagement, patient and clinician communication, and care continuity among Latinos, including persons living with HIV and/or Tuberculosis, and persons impacted by substance abuse. Dr. Zúñiga is currently developing new interdisciplinary collaborations in HIV/TB/Substance use research with colleagues in the US and Brazil.
Eileen V. Pitpitan, PhD
Associate ProfessorCo-Director, Joint Doctoral Program in Interdisciplinary Research on Substance Use
SDSU School of Social Work
epitpitan@sdsu.edu
Dr. Pitpitan, Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at SDSU, and also Associate Adjunct Professor in the Division of Global Public Health at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) is a trained social psychologist with expertise in the social and structural factors surrounding substance use, and in syndemics (i.e., the co-occurrence of substance use, HIV, poor mental health, violence, and other psychosocial problems), sexual risk behavior, and the behavioral prevention of substance use and HIV among high risk and vulnerable groups in low- and middle-income settings, including Mexico and South Africa.
Michael Taffe, PhD
Professor, PsychiatryUC San Diego
mtaffe@ucsd.edu
Research in the Taffe Laboratory focuses on the effects of recreational or abused drugs on the brain and the resulting changes in behavior. We have a current interest in the compulsive use of drugs with a focus on factors involved in the transition from casual to repetitive drug use, as well as on novel therapeutic approaches using the immune system. Additional studies focus on the acute and lasting impact of recreational drug exposure on behavior and physiology.
Steffanie Strathdee, PhD
Professor, MedicineUC San Diego
sstrathdee@ucsd.edu
Steffanie A. Strathdee is Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences and Harold Simon Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins and Simon Fraser Universities. She co-directs UCSD’s new center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH), Global Health Institute and the International Core of UCSD’s Center for AIDS Research. An infectious disease epidemiologist, she has spent the last two decades focusing on HIV prevention in marginalized populations in developing countries and has published over 600 peer-reviewed publications and has recently begun working to move bacteriophage therapy into clinical trials at IPATH.
Currently, she leads a multidisciplinary team of research on HIV risk behaviors among drug users and sex workers on the Mexico-US border. In 2009, she and her team were awarded the Leadership Award in International Collaboration from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who also granted her a MERIT award for her research in Tijuana.
In total, she has been awarded more than 64 million USD in federal research grants as a principal investigator. She has recently co-authored a book The Perfect Predator: An Epidemiologist’s Journey to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug published in 2019. It discusses her experience proposing an experimental bacteriophage therapy that saves her husband from a life-threatening multidrug resistant bacterial infection.
Keith Horvath, PhD
Associate ProfessorSan Diego State University
khorvath@sdsu.edu
Dr. Horvath’s research primarily focuses on developing and testing HIV prevention and treatment mHealth interventions for sexual and gender minorities. He currently leads or co-leads NIH-funded studies to develop and test mHealth interventions for adults and youth living with HIV, HIV-negative transgender youth, men who have sex with men living with HIV and who use stimulant drugs, young sexual minority men who take pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and African American women living with HIV. In addition, Dr. Horvath co-leads a study of formative work to develop a technology-based intervention to optimize on-demand PrEP strategies.
Mark Reed, PhD
Interim Associate Vice President for Research OperationsSan Diego State University
mreed@sdsu.edu
Dr. Reed graduated with a B.A. in psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz and received his graduate training in Social Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. He has worked in the field of substance use prevention since 2000. Prior to his faculty appointment at SDSU, he worked as a Research Scientist at the San Diego State University Research Foundation and in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Reed is also a Research Scientist in the Center for Alcohol and Drug Studies in the School of Social Work at SDSU. His teaching interests include: social science research methods, statistics, human behavior, and addiction/substance abuse prevention. He is well published in top substance use/public health journals and has served as Principal Investigator, Co-Principal Investigator, or Co-Investigator on grants and contracts funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIAAA), the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program, California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute, and The Ohio State University. Dr. Reed is also currently an ad-hoc reviewer for over 20 journals and serves as the Co-Editor-in-Chief for the International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research.