Cate Jensen Peña, PhD
Assistant Professor at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute
2022 NYSCF – Robertson Neuroscience Investigator
PhD, Columbia University
Postdoctoral Training, Mount Sinai
Bio
Dr. Peña is an Assistant Professor at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. Her lab focuses on understanding how early life adversity fundamentally changes brain development and imparts risk for psychiatric disorders in adulthood. Leveraging a combination of genome-wide sequencing, unbiased computational approaches, and epigenome editing in mouse models of early life adversity, she aims to uncover the link between changes in trajectories of brain development at the molecular level with stress hypersensitivity. This work will lay the foundation for new therapeutic strategies to prevent onset of mood and anxiety disorders. Dr. Peña earned her PhD from Columbia University and completed her postdoctoral training at Mount Sinai.