The Center for Affective Neuroscience is led by Scott Russo, PhD, Director, and Ming-Hu Han, PhD, Deputy Director.
Meet the Director
Dr. Russo is a renowned neurobiologist and Professor in the Nash Family Department of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and The Friedman Brain Institute. Dr. Russo is internationally known for his contributions to understanding the neural and immunological basis of neuropsychiatric disorders. His translational studies have identified new disease mechanisms in depressed humans that cause depression-like behaviors in rodent models. He has also identified circuitry in the brain that controls abnormal social behaviors, helping us to take a new perspective on social dysfunction in people with neuropsychiatric illness. He is one of the leading researchers in neuroscience and neurobiology.
Dr. Russo has been very prolific over the past decade, having published in journals such as Nature, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Science, Nature Medicine, Nature Neuroscience, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. His work is frequently cited in the field and featured in the popular press. In 2015 and 2016, Thomson-Reuters listed him as a “highly cited researcher” and “most influential scientific mind.”
Dr. Russo has received numerous honors and awards in recognition of his work, including being named a Kavli National Academy of Science Frontiers Fellow in 2009, receiving the Johnson and Johnson/International Mental Health Research Organization Rising Star Translational Research Award in 2011, and being elected Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in 2016.
Meet the Deputy Director
Dr. Han is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacological Sciences and Nash Family Department of Neuroscience at The Friedman Brain Institute.
Since December 2009, Dr. Han’s laboratory has focused on the neurophysiological reasons that different people respond differently to stress and/or alcohol use. Using a variety of integrated techniques, including viral-mediated gene transfer, electrophysiological and optogenetic approaches, Dr. Han’s research has revealed the heterogeneity of dopamine neurons’ neural circuits in the brain’s reward system in susceptible and resilient phenotypes and has identified a key homeostatic plasticity in the midbrain dopamine system underlying stress resilience.
Dr. Han is internationally known in the field of depression for his work on the neurophysiological mechanisms of susceptibility and resilience to social stress, and his findings have been published in top medical and scientific journals, including Cell, Nature, and Science, and covered by many newspapers and magazines around the world. Dr. Han is the recipient of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) Young Investigator Award, Dr. Harold and Golden Lamport Research Award for Excellence in Basic Science Research, a Mount Sinai Faculty Council Award for Academic Excellence, Johnson and Johnson/International Mental Health Research Organization Rising Star Translational Research Award, NARSAD Independent Investigator Award, and National Alliance on Mental Illness-New York State Excellence Research Award. He is an elected Member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.