Robert Rissman PhD

Dr. Rissman received his graduate degree in Neuroscience from Drexel University College of Medicine in 2001. He completed postgraduate training at the University of California, Irvine and at The Salk Institute, before joining the UCSD Department of Neurosciences in 2008. Dr. Rissman heads a research group studying how changes in stress signaling pathways confer increased vulnerability to neurodegeneration. In addition to his primary research, Dr. Rissman is also the director of the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study Laboratory at UCSD. The primary focus of Dr. Rissman's laboratory is to study the contribution of chronic stress and changes in stress signaling intermediates in Alzheimer's disease (AD) neuropathology. Current areas of investigation include (1) the use of corticotropin-releasing factor receptors (CRFR) knockout mice to identify the role of CRFRs in stress-induced tau phosphorylation; (2) in vivo pharmacology studies to assay the impact of CRFR antagonists on ?-amyloid production/plaque development in AD transgenic mice; (3) the use of human postmortem tissues are being used to assay the specific changes that occur in the CRF signaling system during aging and Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Rissman's laboratory is funded by R01 AG032755 from the National Institute on Aging. Dr. Rissman is a member of the Graduate Program in Neurosciences at UCSD. He serves as an ad hoc reviewer for several scientific journals.