The Staglin Family and the entire One Mind Board and staff are proud to announce UCSF’s appointment of a new Staglin Family / IMHRO Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Devanand Manoli, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. “Dev” Manoli’s research aims to discover paths to enhance social functioning. Social attachments play a central role at all levels of human interaction and are clinically very relevant, as several devastating conditions such as autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia often manifest with a dramatic collapse of inter-personal interactions. Prairie voles are small mouse-like rodents that, unlike other laboratory model animals, display strong social attachment behaviors such that mates typically form an enduring pair bond, even in the lab. Dev began his postdoctoral work with Dr. Nirao Shah with the goal of developing genetic tools to understand the genes and neural circuits that control pair bonding and social attachment. He established the techniques to generate, for the first time, voles with mutations in specific genes. He plans to study the neural circuits that control social attachment, the changes that occur in these neurons during early and adolescent development, and how these circuits respond to early life stress. This parallels Dev’s clinical interest in the social attachment deficits seen in children and adolescents that are beginning to show signs of psychotic illness. Dev plans to generate voles with mutations in genes implicated in autism and schizophrenia to understand the deficits in social attachment that are hallmarks of these disorders, and determine how these can be used to identify at risk populations earlier. For his work, Dev has won several awards, including the a Howard Hughes Janelia Farm Research Fellowship, the Julius R. Krevans Award for Clinical Excellence at UCSF, fellowships from the Sandler and NARSAD foundations, and the NIMH Outstanding Resident Award.
Dr. Manoli is the fourth Staglin Family / IMHRO Assistant Professor of Psychiatry to be appointed to UCSF’s faculty. The Staglin Family / One Mind Assistant Professor program was established by the One Mind Board to serve to accelerate promising careers and foster the development of novel approaches to brain health research. Funding for these positions is supported from proceeds for each year’s Music Festival for Brain Health. To date, over $2 Million has been provided by One Mind to UCSF. The three previous appointees, Susan Voglmaier, M.D., Ph.D., Lauren Weiss, Ph.D., and Vikaas Sohal, M.D., Ph.D. have all made groundbreaking discoveries toward a deeper understanding of conditions such as schizophrenia and autism. As Dr. Voglmaier has said, “support from One Mind allowed my lab to enact our scientific vision, including considering both more novel ideas and older ideas currently out of favor. In contrast, traditional funding sources often fund safe science, things that are almost done already, or topics or techniques that happen to be currently popular. We have been able to spend some time making tools that will bear fruit for years to come.”
As Dr. Manoli begins his new Assistant Professorship, he says, “I thank the Staglin family and One Mind for their amazing support as I begin the lab. I look forward to being part of the group.”
To Dev, we say, congratulations and welcome to the One Mind family. Our hopes are with you in your research to offer patients new opportunities to heal.