The department’s Pipeline to Independent Research (P2IR) grants were introduced in early 2026 as a mechanism to support research startups for early career faculty. The following researchers are the first recipients of a P2IR grant that will support 50% FTE for two years and provide $15K per year for allowable expenses such as supplies, conference travel, publications, and staff support. Congratulations to all four recipients!
 
Mi-Seon Kong, PhD — Dr. Kong’s project will investigate how dopamine signaling in the central amygdala (CeA) enables the brain to integrate rewarding and threatening experiences to support adaptive emotional learning and prevent fear generalization, a process relevant to psychiatric disorders such as PTSD. Building on preliminary findings that reward-associated cues promote fear discrimination through CeA dopamine mechanisms, the research tests the hypothesis that dopamine receptor–dependent signaling reorganizes CeA circuit activity to facilitate discrimination learning.
 
Antoine Lebeaut, PhD — The goal of Dr. Lebeaut’s project is to develop a group-based, trauma-informed, peer-delivered alcohol psychoeducation program specifically designed for firefighters. The study will use an iterative, stakeholder-informed development approach and involve collaboration with a community-based advisory committee to create the single-session, peer-delivered program that (1) increases knowledge of posttraumatic stress and alcohol use relations and their consequences, (2) promotes engagement in healthy coping and behavioral health strategies, and (3) establishes a sustainable, replicable model for training peer leaders to expand access to mental health programming in rural and underserved fire service communities.
 
Justin Tauscher, PhD — The overall objective of Dr. Tauscher’s project is to develop and validate multimodal digital features associated with substance use severity and longitudinal change in individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) using an existing national digital phenotyping cohort. To accomplish this, Dr. Tauscher and his team will pursue three aims including (1) the development and refinement of interpretable digital features from multimodal smartphone data, (2) the validation of digital features in relation to substance use severity and longitudinal change, and (3) the establishment of stakeholder-informed interpretability and responsible use parameters for digital substance-use indicators.
 
Michael Gilson, JD, PhD — Dr. Gilson’s project examines event-specific alcohol use among high school seniors, focusing on prom and other end-of-year milestones as potential high-risk contexts for drinking. Guided by the Prototype Willingness Model, the study will assess alcohol use, perceived social norms, willingness, intentions, and related harms through pre- and post-prom surveys, focus groups, and collaboration with school administrators. The project also aims to identify effective, evidence-based prevention strategies tailored to high school settings and informed by students and staff. Findings will support development of targeted interventions and strengthen future large-scale research on adolescent alcohol, cannabis, and other substance use prevention.