Leadership

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Dr. Brown is a Research Assistant Professor in Addiction Sciences at MUSC.  Her research focuses disparities in substance use disorders and comorbid stress-related conditions ( e.g., PTSD, trauma, early childhood adversity) that impact women and African Americans.  She is currently examining the impact of race-related stress among individuals with alcohol use disorder and PTSD. She is also conducting a laboratory study to investigate sex differences in the impact of early childhood stress on opioid craving among men and women with opioid use disorder.

Matthew J. Carpenter, Ph.D., is the Flora McLeod Edwards Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research and a clinical psychologist with strong research expertise in behavioral science, particularly addictive behaviors and smoking cessation. In his associate director role, he provides strategic direction, research leadership, and program development to advance behavioral, epidemiologic, and population science across the cancer continuum, with an emphasis on cancer prevention, early detection, health disparities, survivorship, and implementation science.

The Innovation Sciences Unit is led by Dr. Jennifer Dahne, an Associate Professor within the Addiction Sciences Division of the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Dahne is an academic entrepreneur who has received five small business grants from various NIH institutes (NIMH, NIDA, NCATS, NIMHD) totaling more than $3M. Dr. Dahne has co-founded two faculty-led spinout companies, both of which are in the digital health space. Dr. Dahne has led the development, evaluation, and commercialization of five commercially available digital health products to date. These products have been evaluated via rigorous randomized clinical trials which have accrued more than 1,000 patients. In addition to entrepreneurial ventures, Dr. Dahne directs a research laboratory within the Addiction Sciences Division that has received numerous traditional NIH grant awards including R01, R21, and K23 funding. Dr. Dahne is passionate about translating academic innovations into products that can be widely disseminated and commercialized in order to improve public health.

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Program Director

Senior Mentor

Dr. Gex’s research focuses on improving the efficacy of brief interventions for substance use prevention and early intervention to reduce substance use related harms and the risk of developing substance use disorders (SUDs), and to improve overall health outcomes across the lifespan. She is especially interested in understanding behavioral and intervention mechanisms that lead to increased motivation for behavior change among individuals who use cannabis.

Dr. Griffin is the Associate Director of the Clinical Neurobiology Laboratory. He manages the day-to-day operations of the laboratory and serves as a liaison within the Clinical Trials and Innovation Sciences Program, which supports investigator initiated clinical trials. In addition, he develops new assays using state of the art Mass Spectrometry methods to support research and clinical operations in the department. Examples include assays for the primary metabolite of cannabis use (THC-COOH) and cannabidiol (CBD). Another assay under development will quantify a direct metabolite of alcohol (phosphatidylethanol).

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Dr. Karen Hartwell has extensive clinical experience as a general and addiction psychiatrist in the treatment of substance use disorders with/without comorbid psychiatric disorders. She was the Medical Director of the Substance Treatment and Recovery Program at the Ralph H Johnson VAMC until 2019. She has treated veterans with multiple substance use disorders, including opioids, alcohol, and stimulants, among others. She is now leading several initiatives to address the opioid epidemic, including becoming the medical director of MUSC’s Project ECHO Opioid Use Disorder program.

Dr. Hartwell made a mid-life career change and returned to academics to complete a fellowship in addiction psychiatry to better address the substance use disorders that commonly co-occur with psychiatric disorders. Her research career has focused on understanding the underlying neurobiology and improving treatment outcomes. She has collaborated on a variety of research studies involving opioids, cocaine, cannabis, alcohol, and tobacco use disorders. She has also been involved in multiple clinical trials, including multisite trials ranging from Phase 2 to Phase 4, investigating a variety of pharmacotherapeutic agents, and TMS.

Louise Haynes is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina. For the last sixteen years, she has served as a liaison between academic research and community treatment programs for the Clinical Trials Network of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. In addition to her research experience, Ms. Haynes has worked in both clinical and administrative roles in South Carolina. She was Director of Women’s Services for the South Carolina Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services and, later, the Director of Morris Village, a residential treatment program in Columbia.

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Dr. Jarnecke believes that people’s relationships and social connectedness are key to well-being; thus, her primary research focuses on the ways that interpersonal relationships affect recovery from substance use and after trauma. She is currently co-leading a community-based research study that is developing and testing a digital tool to better detect and connect individuals with resources for intimate partner violence and co-occurring mental health conditions in substance use treatment settings. She is also working on research to better understand the neurobiology underlying alcohol use disorder and PTSD and disseminate treatments that help patients heal from substance use and PTSD.

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Translational Neuroscience Program Lead

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Dr. McCauley is a clinical psychologist who has led efforts to disseminate best practices in opioid prescribing to dental professionals. She will head up the Health Care Systems Liaison Core.

Dr. McCauley's general research interests focus on the dissemination and implementation of multi-level interventions targeting prescription opioid abuse and its common comorbidities (e.g., pain, traumatic stress, depression). In addition, Dr. McCauley is an active collaborator on projects to develop, evaluate, and implement indicated prevention and early intervention programming for youth and adults at-risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance use disorders, and HIV/STI.

Dr. Erin A. McClure is a behavioral psychologist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. McClure earned her B.S. in Psychology and Neuroscience from Allegheny College and her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Florida. The overarching goal of Dr. McClure’s program of research is broadly focused on reducing the harmful impact of cannabis and tobacco/nicotine product use across the lifespan. Her research has focused on refining and evaluating strategies to improve long-term abstinence and prevent relapse, as well as pursuing harm reduction strategies to minimize the adverse impact of substance use; all utilizing technology to improve remote procedures and data quality, as well as to increase reach and accessibility.

Program Director
843-792-5216 mcraeal@musc.edu

Dr. Mellick is conducting a high-risk multimodal neuroimaging study that aims to identify potential reward circuitry based endophenotypes for co-occurring bipolar disorder and alcohol use disorder (BD+AUD). In addition, he is the principal investigator for a pilot project evaluating bar-laboratory methods for the study of subjective response to alcohol and choice drinking in BD+AUD.

Dr. Prisciandaro's research focuses on individuals with Bipolar Disorder and Substance Use Disorder. His lab work is primarily in brain imaging and neuropsychopharmacology.

Dr. Santa Ana is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at MUSC and the Evidence-Based Training Coordinator for the VISN 7 Homeless Program at the Department of Veterans Affairs. She is a core investigator within HEROIC at the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center and she collaborates with other MUSC faculty in Psychiatry on projects involving PTSD, substance use disorder, relapse prevention, and chronic pain for patients with substance use and other co-existing disorders.\

Dr. Santa Ana works on the development and efficacy testing of innovative methods designed to deliver evidence-based treatments. She has experience with group motivational interviewing targeting substance use disorders and tobacco dependence among dually diagnosed patients.

Dr. Saraiya is a licensed clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at MUSC. She is director of the PATH lab. Her research aims to address underlying trauma and PTSD co-occurring with substance use with a focus on health disparities and ongoing inequities based on identity, culture, race, and context. She has been funded by several NIH awards and is passionate about mentoring individuals in the academic sciences. For more updates, find her on X @DrTanyaSaraiya.

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Dr. Squeglia is the co-Director of the MUSC Youth Collaborative, and her National Institutes of Health-supported research focuses on:

(1) understanding the effects of alcohol and cannabis use on brain development and

(2) using neuroscience to improve prevention and treatment of adolescent substance use disorders.

Executive Council

The overarching goal of Dr. Tomko's research is to improve treatment outcomes for individuals with substance use disorders by understanding individual differences in substance use disorder presentation and identifying which treatments are optimal for a specific individual. 

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences