Adrienne Lahti, M.D.Two faculty members in the Department of Psychiatry at the UAB School of Medicine have been honored by the American Psychiatric Association for their schizophrenia research. Adrienne Lahti, M.D., Patrick H. Linton professor and director of the Division of Behavior Neurobiology, and Nina Kraguljac, M.D., assistant professor, were named the recipients of the 2017 Kempf Fund Award for Research Development in Psychobiological Psychiatry, which honors research excellence in the physiological, psychological, and/or sociological causes and treatment for schizophrenia. Established in 1988, the award recognizes a senior researcher for significant contributions in both research and mentorship, along with an outstanding junior research psychiatrist working in a mentor-trainee relationship with the senior award recipient.
Nina Kraguljac, M.D.Lahti joined the UAB faculty since 2006. She earned her medical degree from the Universite of Liege in Liege, Belgium and completed a residency in psychiatry at the University of Michigan, and fellowship in schizophrenia research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Her primary research interests are in the use of multimodal brain imaging techniques to study the neuropathology of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and to evaluate the effects of psychotropic drugs on brain function and biochemistry.Kraguljac attended medical school at Paracelsus Medical University in Salzburg, Austria, before completing her residency at UAB in 2013. She has worked with Lahti on different projects investigating neuroimaging correlates of treatment response in patients with schizophrenia and is an expert in analysis and interpretation of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy data.
Lahti and Kraguljac will be presented the award during the APA’s annual meeting in May.