Vasiliki Michopoulos, PhD, MSCR
Associate Professor
Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Emory School of Medicine
Co-Director
Grady Trauma Project
Biography
Dr. Vasiliki (Vas) Michopoulos is an Emory National Primate Research Center Core Scientist with expertise in both nonhuman primate (NHP) and human behavioral neuroendocrinology and psychoneuroimmunology. She is also Co-Director of the Grady Trauma Project and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Emory University.
Dr. Michopoulos' research investigates how psychosocial stress exposure (including trauma) across the lifespan adversely affects behavior and physiology using a translational neuroscience approach across NHPs and humans in a sex-specific manner. Her research is committed to studying women's health by focusing broadly on how adverse social experience influences physiology, behavior, brain processes and the emergence of psychopathology through changes in neuroendocrine and inflammatory signaling. She employs robust social behavioral paradigms, hormone manipulation, dietary interventions, psychophysiology, neuroimaging techniques as well as novel genetic approaches to understand the etiology of stress-induced alterations in behavior and physiology during development and in adulthood in NHPs and humans.