Maura Boldrini Dupont, MD PhD
Maura Boldrini Dupont, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Psychiatry, Director of the Quantitative Brain Biology (Brain QUANT) Institute, and the Human Neurobiology laboratory in the Department of Psychiatry at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She is Faculty at the Columbia Doctoral Program in Neurobiology & Behavior, Data Science Institute, Stem Cell Initiative, and Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.
The Boldrini Dupont Lab focuses on understanding genetic and environmental factors that shape brain function in psychiatric disorders, suicidal behavior, aging, dementias, and the COVID brain. The goal is to identify new treatment targets for drug discovery and inform precision medicine approaches for patient care.
In her laboratory, Prof Boldrini Dupont is studies brain circuits at the cellular and molecular level for understanding how the mind and the brain interact generating symptoms that make people suffer. She has shown that the human brain can make new neurons throughout our lifetime. These new neurons are necessary for learning and memory, copying with stress, healthy aging, and mental health. In the past few years, she has shown that brain inflammation, as observed in patients with COVID, leads to loss of new neurons, and that COVID patients have 10 times fewer new neurons than subjects who did not have COVID.
She has published over 50 scientific articles and edited 7 books on depression and suicide, stress responses, panic disorder, and atypical antipsychotics. Her research on brain biology has been published in Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Cell Stem Cell, Biological Psychiatry, Brain, Molecular Psychiatry, Neuropsychopharmacology and other top journals.
Prof Boldrini Dupont leads a diverse laboratory and has been teaching and supervising graduate and undergraduate students, medical students, psychiatry residents and postdocs. She is committed to opening her lab for opportunities to raising scientists of all backgrounds.
