David A. Kupferschmidt BSc, MA, PhD

Dr. Kupferschmidt earned his M.A. (2007) and Ph.D. (2012) in Psychology from the University of Toronto, where he studied the neurochemistry of stress and relapse to drug seeking. During his postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Dr. Kupferschmidt combined neurophysiology with optical, viral, and transgenic tools to assess synaptic and circuit mechanisms of skill and habit learning.

Dr. Kupferschmidt also established novel approaches to monitor in vivo calcium dynamics in discrete projections from prefrontal and sensorimotor cortices to the striatum to probe real-time circuit function during action learning. Dr. Kupferschmidt joined NINDS in 2017 as the lead scientist in the lab of NIMH Director, Dr. Joshua A. Gordon. In consultation with Dr. Gordon, Dr. Kupferschmidt guides research into the neural circuit basis of working memory, and its dysfunction in mouse models of genetic susceptibility to neuropsychiatric disease, particularly schizophrenia.