About ME
I am an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Psychology at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) and the Department of Humanities, Languages & Media Arts at Genesee Community College (SUNY). I did my undergraduate studies in psychology at the University of Toronto. My Honors Thesis in Neuroscience was on the effects of cocaine locomotor activity following intra-VTA injections of corticotrophin-releasing factor. Next, I did a Masters of Science in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Montreal. My project was on the effects of quetiapine on brain stimulation reward thresholds following withdrawal from chronic amphetamine treatment. I followed up my studies with a doctorate in the same program. Here, I studied the effects of quetiapine on extrapyramidal and psychiatric symptoms in schizophrenia patients dually diagnosed with addiction. I also did two postdocs; one in multiple sclerosis at the University of Calgary and another one in brain imaging in addiction (fMRI and PET) at the Yale University School of Medicine.
In my time as an Adjunct Professor at SCSU and Genesee Community College, I have taught undergraduate courses (Introduction to Psychology, Brain and Behavior) and graduate courses (Problems in Psychology) to a diverse student body. I have experience in both online as well as face-to-face instruction. During my career in academia, I have become proficient in translating preclinical and clinical research to broad audiences, including undergraduate and graduate students, patients, policymakers, and clinicians. I have developed the skill of clearly presenting information on preclinical models, clinical trials, population-based approaches, and data-intensive investigations as well as promoting engagement among audiences.
I have a strong commitment to cultural competence due to having lived in several different multicultural countries and being exposed to various ethnicities. My family are Jewish Ukrainian immigrants who fled the Soviet Union in 1990, before it collapsed. We moved to Israel and subsequently came to Canada as refugees. We struggled to survive, having lived in shelters for the first year and were later deported back to the Ukraine because we lacked the necessary legal documents. We later reapplied to come to Canada through the points system and were granted citizenship. Canada has an extremely diverse population, especially in Toronto where I grew up. During my graduate studies, I also lived in Montreal and attended the French-speaking Université de Montréal. Subsequently, I moved to the United States and have been exposed to the diverse population of New Haven. Here, I gained experience engaging a diverse student body while teaching at SCSU, whose demographic consists of inner-city youth, with a large proportion from Hispanic and African American backgrounds. In my classes, I like to make sure that all students are succeeding, regardless of their socioeconomic or cultural background. Throughout my research career, I have mentored students of a variety ethnic backgrounds, such as Western European, Hindu, Vietnamese, Chinese, Persian, Turkish, and Arab.
During my time working at the Connecticut Mental Health Center, I have gained a strong
appreciation for community initiatives that improve the lives of the local population. For 7 years, I worked on research projects that involved working with the inner-city community in New Haven to help people kick their drug habits. Our studies involved paying research subjects to participate in research that involved staying on an inpatient addiction unit for 3 weeks and undergoing brain imaging scans. While on the unit, subjects would have to stay sober and would receive world class treatment for their addiction from Yale psychiatrists. After the inpatient stay, I would conduct follow-up with subjects by paying them to stay sober via contingency management. To be successful I had to engage a group of subjects from a diverse array of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds on a personal level, and I can say that I witnessed several people who were able to reduce or completely cease their drug use due to participation in our research.


The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function
- F. Scott Fitzgerald