Marjorie C. Gondré-Lewis, PhD

Marjorie C. Gondre-Lewis, PhD serves as a professor of neuroscience at the Howard University College of Medicine. She is associate director of the Georgetown-Howard Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) KL2 Scholars Program and director of the Developmental Neuropsychopharmacology Laboratory. Her research focuses on typical and aberrant reward mechanisms as occurs in substance use disorders (SUD), affective disorders, and how these and cognition are impacted by early life stress and maltreatment. Animal models of excessive alcohol drinking, maternal deprivation stress, and prenatal nicotine exposure are used to investigate the pharmacology, genetics, and biochemistry associated with stress and SUDs. Clinical translational projects with human participants address health disparities and co-morbidities associated with HIV and SUD (substance use disorder) focusing on ethnicity-informed genetic variations and their impact on disease diagnosis and treatment, as well as barriers to brain health due to social determinants of health (SDoH). She has authored more than 60 research articles and serves/has served as principle investigator on numerous grants from several institutes of the National Institutes of Health, foundations, and companies. She teaches neuroscience and cell biology to students in the Graduate and Health Sciences schools and serves on school-wide, national and international committees and groups. She is intimately involved in career development, mentoring, and coaching opportunities to support researchers (trainees, junior and established faculty) to influence the best possible outcome for the next generation of scholars.