COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
2011-2012 INCOMING LEON LEVY FELLOWSHIP RECIPIENTS
Christopher Cselenyi, M.D., Ph.D. earned his B.A. from the
University of Miami with majors in English and Biochemistry.
He wrote his thesis on epic simile and developed biophysical
methods to study an enzyme involved in DNA damage and
repair. Christopher then enrolled in the Medical Scientist
Training Program at Vanderbilt University where he earned his
Ph.D. and M.D. degrees. In his doctoral research, he studied
Wnt signaling using biochemically amenable Xenopus egg
extracts. Christopher used egg extracts to address several problems in the field: receptor-mediated
signal transduction, G proteins in Wnt signaling, and pharmacological modulators of Wnt signaling.
After working with child and adolescent patients suffering from psychiatric diseases, Christopher
decided to devote his career to understanding neurodevelopmental origins of psychiatric diseases as
a child psychiatrist and developmental neurobiologist. At Vanderbilt, Christopher won awards for
“most outstanding Ph.D. training accomplishments” and “most progress in clinical psychiatry.”
Through the Levy fellowship, he will address the role of nervous system development on behavior.
Atheir Abbas, M.D., Ph.D. earned his B.S. from Case Western
Reserve University where he graduated magna cum laude. He
entered the NIH-funded Medical Scientist Training Program at
Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his M.D. and
Ph.D. degrees. His research interests focused on the role of
serotonin receptors in cognitive processes, regulation of
serotonin receptor function in the brain, and mechanisms of
action of serotonergic drugs. Atheir is author on a dozen
publications in widely read scientific journals including Journal of Neuroscience, Neuron, Nature, Nucleic
Acids Research, and Pyschopharmacology. His research projects included a report on the molecular
underpinnings of serotonergic-glutamatergic crosstalk, and an article on a novel method for
measuring post-transcriptional RNA editing of serotonin 5-HT2C receptors. He recently received the
Ray A. and Robert L. Kroc award for outstanding research. Through the Levy fellowship, Dr.
Abbas plans to study neural correlates of psychiatric disease states using in vivo electrophysiologic
techniques.
Bradley Miller, M.D., Ph.D. earned his BS in Neural Sciences
from New York University where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa
and graduated summa cum laude. As an undergraduate, he studied
mechanisms of short term synaptic plasticity and won the
Sherrington Award for the best undergraduate neuroscience
research. He earned his M.D., Ph.D. degrees from Washington
University in Saint Louis. His doctoral research into the
molecular mechanisms of axonal degeneration was published in
Nature Neuroscience and he was awarded the O'Leary Prize for outstanding research in neuroscience.
Through the Levy fellowship, Dr. Miller plans to use rodent models to explore psychiatric illness at
the molecular and circuit levels.