2023 Pain Consortium Symposium on Advances in Pain Research: Resilience and Pathways to Recovery
June 6-7, 2023
Natcher Conference Center
NIH Campus, Bethesda MD
Co-chairs:
Melissa Ghim, PhD | NIDCR
Devon Oskvig, PhD | NIA
Speaker Biographies (Alphabetical Order)
Emily Bartley, PhD
Dr. Bartley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Dentistry and Behavioral Science, Pain Research & Intervention Center of Excellence (PRICE), at the University of Florida. She received her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Tulsa, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in translational pain research from the University of Florida. Dr. Bartley’s research program specializes in the assessment of biological and psychosocial factors that impact chronic pain and how these mechanisms affect patient response to intervention. Inspired by the field of positive psychology, her laboratory specifically examines adaptive processes that foster resilience in pain, with an emphasis on the development of targeted clinical interventions that promote resilience, goal-directed behavior, and positive health. Dr. Bartley’s work in the area of resilience and pain has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center, and the NIH/NIA Research Centers Collaborative Network.
Nigel Bunnett, PhD
Nigel W. Bunnett Ph.D. is Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular Pathobiology and Associate Dean for Research Development, College of Dentistry, New York University. He is also a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Physiology and an Investigator in the Neuroscience Institute, Grossman School of Medicine, New York University.
Nigel obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and completed post-doctoral fellowships at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Washington. In 1987, he joined the University of California, San Francisco, remaining there for 25 years and becoming Professor of Surgery and Physiology and Vice Chair of Surgery. In 2011, Nigel was appointed to Monash University as a National Health and Medical Research Council Australia Fellow and Deputy Director of the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Science. In 2016, Nigel was recruited to Columbia University in the City of New York as Professor of Surgery and Pharmacology and Vice Chair for Research in Surgery. Nigel joined New York University in 2019.
Nigel’s laboratory investigates the mechanisms by which G protein-coupled receptors and receptor tyrosine kinases signal chronic pain, itch and neurogenic inflammation. A particular focus of his research is to understand how receptors signal from subcellular compartments of neurons to induce the transition from acute (physiological) to chronic (pathological) pain. His laboratory develops therapeutic approaches that target intracellular receptors, providing more effective and long-lasting relief from chronic pain than conventional treatments. Nigel’s research has been reported in ~350 publications, which have received >41,000 citations, and is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. His contributions have been recognized by awards including NIH Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) Award, NHMRC Australia Fellowship, and the Research Mentor Award from the American Gastroenterology Association. Nigel served as Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Physiology, Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology.
Luda Diatchenko, MD, PhD
Luda Diatchenko, MD, PhD is a Canada Research Chair in Human Pain Genetics and a Professor at the Faculty of Dentistry and Medicine, at McGill University. Dr. Diatchenko earned her MD and PhD in the field of Molecular Biology from the Russian State Medical University. Dr. Diatchenko started her career in industry, she was a Leader of the RNA Expression Group at Clontech, Inc., and subsequently, Director of Gene Discovery at Attagene, Inc. During this time, Dr. Diatchenko was actively involved in the development of several widely-used and widely-cited molecular tools for the analysis of gene expression and regulation. Dr. Diatchenko’s academic career started in 2000 in the Center for Neurosensory Disorders at the University of North Carolina. Her research since then is focused on determining the genetic mechanisms that impact and shape human pain perception and risk of development of chronic pain conditions, enabling new approaches to identify drug targets, treatment responses to analgesics, and diagnostics. In total, Dr. Diatchenko has authored or co-authored over 150 peer-reviewed research papers in journals, 10 book chapters, and edited a book in human pain genetics. She is a past and current member and an active officer of several national and international scientific societies, including the International Association for the Study of Pain, the American Pain Society, and Canadian Pain Society.
Robert Edwards, PhD
Dr. Edwards is an Associate Professor and a licensed clinical psychologist in the Pain Management Center in the Department of Anesthesiology at Brigham & Women’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School. He attended the University of Alabama at Birmingham, completing a Ph.D. in Medical Psychology and a Master’s in Public Health. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Pain Psychology at Johns Hopkins, before joining the faculty in Psychiatry there. He moved to Brigham & Women’s Hospital in 2008. Dr. Edwards functions in a clinical capacity as a psychologist at the BWH Pain Management Center, where his responsibilities include the biopsychosocial assessment and treatment of chronic pain patients referred to the Pain Center. He functions as a research mentor to junior faculty members across a number of Departments and institutions, and he serves on the editorial boards of several pain and psychology journals. Dr. Edwards’ research is funded by NIH, PCORI, NSF, and other organizations; his work focuses on biobehavioral aspects of acute and chronic pain. Specifically, he studies individual differences in pain responses, and the neurobiological mechanisms by which psychosocial processes shape those individual differences. In addition, Dr. Edwards’ research group is working in the area of personalized pain medicine, developing and testing non-pharmacologic treatments for chronic pain, and identifying characteristics that predict responses to these treatments.
Madelyn Frumkin
Madelyn Frumkin is a PhD candidate in Clinical Science at Washington University in St. Louis. Madelyn completed her undergraduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Madelyn's research focuses on using mobile health data to improve understanding, prediction, and treatment of co-occurring psychological and physiological problems. Her current work examining individual differences in biopsychosocial mechanisms underlying chronic back pain and response to spine surgery is funded by an F31 from the National Institute of Mental Health. Madelyn was additionally awarded a Graduate Student Research Scholarship from the American Psychological Foundation/Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology and a Dissertation Research Award from the American Psychological Association. Starting in July 2023, she will complete her predoctoral internship at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Taichi Goto, PhD, RN
Dr. Taichi Goto is currently a Research fellow with the Dr. Saligan laboratory at the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), National Institutes of Health. He obtained his Ph.D. in health science from the University of Tokyo in 2018. He completed two post-doctoral fellowships in the NINR and the University of Maryland School of Nursing and transitioned to his current position last year. His research interest is using symptom science for disease prevention and health promotion, one of the NINR research lenses. He has been working on underlying mechanisms and identifying biomarkers of wound pain to help develop appropriate interventions, especially for vulnerable populations such as the cognitively impaired. His current project is exploring the relationships of single nucleotide polymorphisms in some genes with chronic symptoms experienced by cancer patients and survivors.
Burel Goodin, PhD
Burel R. Goodin, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in translational pain science, with broad expertise ranging from clinical psychology to social neuroscience and a notable record of both building and leading transdisciplinary research teams. Dr. Goodin currently serves as the (M)PI of the Examining Racial and SocioEconomic Disparities (ERASED) in Low Back Pain Study (NIMHD; R01MD010441), the HIV Insomnia Pain Physical Function and Inflammation (HIPPI) study (NHLBI; R01HL147603), the Sex, Hormones, and Identity affect Nociceptive Expression (SHINE) study (NINR; R01NR019417), and the Diet Interventions, by Race, Evaluated as Complementary Treatments for Pain (DIRECTPain) study (NINR; R01NR020523). Dr. Goodin also serves as the subaward PI of the Pain Relief for Osteoarthritis through Combined Treatments (PROACT) study (NIA; R37AG033906). Dr. Goodin’s scientific expertise is centrally related to disparities in the experience of pain and its management based upon minority status, having published extensively on psychological aspects of chronic pain outcomes with more recent work examining the environmental conditions and context within which people develop and live that influence pain. Dr. Goodin is a leading expert in the application of social neuroscience frameworks to help guide understanding of the mechanisms that drive pain disparities. A defining aspect of Dr. Goodin’s career has been bringing together investigators from different disciplines and areas to address scientific problems that require innovative translational research perspectives. Dr. Goodin has a longstanding commitment to mentoring the next generation of pain scientists. Since 2012, he has served as primary mentor for eight early-stage faculty members, five post-doctoral fellows, fourteen pre-doctoral students, and over thirty undergraduate students. Over 50% of his trainees have come from under-represented and minoritized backgrounds.
Afton Hassett, PsyD
Dr. Hassett is an Associate Professor and the Director of Pain and Opioid Research in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Michigan. As a clinical psychologist and principal investigator at the Chronic Pain & Fatigue Research Center, her work has long focused on exploring novel interventions to promote resilience and more rewarding self-management for people with pain. She is an MPI along with Dr. Daniel Clauw for the University of Michigan BACPAC Mechanistic Research Center (NIAMS U19 AR076734) and site PI for the NIAMS BACPAC BEST collaborative clinical trial. She has also recently completed an RCT exploring the potential for expanding the focus on resilience in CBT for chronic pain (NINR R01 NR017096). Dr. Hassett is a Past President of the Association of Rheumatology Professionals and an Associate Editor for Arthritis Care & Research. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and is the author of the Chronic Pain Reset, an evidence-based pain self-management book written for people living with pain.
Nicole Hemmenway
Nicole Hemmenway currently serves as CEO of the U.S. Pain Foundation. She previously directed the INvisible Project, an online and print magazine that highlights the experiences of people living with pain, for the organization. In addition to being a patient advocate, Nicole is also an author and believes all patients have a story to tell. Her book, No, It Is NOT in My Head: The Journey of a Chronic Pain Survivor from Wheelchair to Marathon, details her struggles and triumphs in dealing with complex regional pain syndrome, a debilitating neurological disorder. In September 2015, Nicole was featured in a campaign in USA Today in recognition of her role as an advocate for those living with chronic pain; and in 2017, she received the Unsung Hero Award for her work in the pain community. Nicole lives in the Nashville area with her husband and three young sons.
Susmita Kashikar-Zuck, PhD
Dr. Kashikar-Zuck is a clinical psychologist and Professor of Pediatrics and Clinical Anesthesiology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. She completed her doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin in 1995 followed by a post-doctoral fellowship in pain management at Duke University Medical Center. She is the founding psychologist of the multidisciplinary pediatric pain clinic at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and is Associate Director of the Pediatric Pain Research Center and co-Director of the NIAMS P30 Core Center for Clinical Research in pediatric musculoskeletal and rheumatic diseases. Dr. Kashikar-Zuck’s research in pediatric pain has received continuous NIH funding for over 20 years. Her lab focuses on 1) clinical trials of cognitive-behavioral and integrative treatments for chronic musculoskeletal pain in children including novel neuromuscular exercise-based treatments adapted from injury prevention research 2) longitudinal studies of youth with pediatric pain as they transition to adulthood and 3) development and validation of patient-reported outcome measures. She has published over 100 scientific papers, is an Associate Editor for the journal PAIN and regularly serves as a study section member for grant review panels at the NIH and other funding agencies. She also serves as the Chair of the Pain Committee of the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA). Dr. Kashikar-Zuck is an established mentor in pediatric pain research. She held an NIH K24 mentoring award for 10 years, from 2009-2019 and she is currently a faculty mentor on the NIH HEAL national K12 program. She has served as a mentor for a large number of undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral students, as well as early career faculty in pediatric pain research who have gone on to successful clinical and academic careers.
Kip Ludwig, PhD
Dr. Ludwig is the Co-Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Translational Neuroengineering (WITNe) and leads the Ludwig Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin within the WITNe structure. The primary focus of his lab is developing next-generation neuromodulation therapies that use minimally invasive strategies to hack the nervous system to treat circuit dysfunction and deliver biomolecules to target areas with unprecedented precision.
Prior to Wisconsin Dr. Ludwig served as the Program Director for Neural Engineering at the National Institutes of Health. He co-led the Translational Devices Program at NINDS, led the NIH BRAIN Initiative programs to catalyze implantable academic and clinical devices to stimulate and/or record from the central nervous system, and led a trans-NIH planning team in developing the ~250 million dollar S.P.A.R.C. Program to stimulate advances in neuromodulation therapies for organ systems.
Dr. Ludwig also worked in Industry as a research scientist, where his team conceived, developed and demonstrated the chronic efficacy of a next-generation neural stimulation electrode for reducing blood pressure in both pre-clinical studies and clinical trials. Through his industry work he oversaw Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) and non-GLP studies enabling clinical trials in Europe and the United States, as well as participated in the protocol development and execution of those trials, leading to approval for sale in twenty countries including the United States.
Dr. Ludwig connects his academic research to the neuromodulation industry and clinical translation through multiple consulting and advisory roles. He serves as the Chair of the NeuroOne Scientific Advisory Board on Artificial Intelligence, and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Abbott, Battelle, Blackfynn, Cala Health, the National Center for Adaptive Neurotechnologies and Presidio Medical. He is a co-founder of Neuronoff, Inc. and NeuraWorx. Dr. Ludwig is also a paid consultant for Galvani Bioelectronics, CVRx, Presidio Medical, and the Alfred Mann Foundation.
Tyler Nelson, PhD
Dr. Tyler Nelson is a postdoctoral assistant research scientist in the New York University (NYU) Pain Research Center. Tyler received his PhD in Neurobiology from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine as a trainee in the Pittsburgh Center for Pain Research. Tyler’s doctoral research focused on the spinal cord dorsal horn microcircuitry underlying neuropathic pain, with a focus on neuropeptide Y - Y1 signaling. His doctoral work was supported by multiple grants from the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), including a T32, an F32, and an F99. In his postdoctoral work at NYU, he studies the peripheral and central mechanisms of neuropathic and neuromuscular pain using a combination of molecular, genetic, electrophysiological, and behavioral approaches. Tyler is currently funded by a K00 award focused on dissecting the parabrachial nucleus’s role in the manifestation and maintenance of neuropathic pain.
Christine Ritchie, MD
Christine Ritchie, MD, MSPH, is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Kenneth L. Minaker Endowed Chair in Geriatrics and Director of Research for the Division of Palliative Care and Geriatric Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). She is a board-certified geriatrician, palliative care physician and health care delivery scientist who conducts research focused on optimizing quality of life for those with chronic serious illness. Dr. Ritchie directs the Center for Aging and Serious Illness Research in the MGH Mongan Institute and the MGH Dementia Care Collaborative. She co-leads several NIH funded observational studies seeking to better understand the lived experience of pain in older adults and clinical trials testing strategies to improve functional and quality of life outcomes in older adults with chronic pain.
Steve Ross, MD
Dr. Stephen Ross is Research Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at
the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Dr. Ross is a founding member of the NYU Psychedelic
Research Group and is currently associate director of the NYU Langone Center for Psychedelic
Medicine and director of the Psychedelic Medicine Research Training Program. Dr Ross is principal
investigator or co-principal investigator on several ongoing and completed psychedelic-focused
studies at NYU including: phase II RCT of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy in patients with life-
threatening cancer-related psychiatric and existential distress, phase I/II RCT of LSD-assisted
psychotherapy in advanced cancer pain syndromes, phase II RCT of psilocybin-assisted
psychotherapy in alcohol use disorder, phase I/II controlled trial administering psilocybin to religious
professionals, and phase II RCT of psilocybin treatment for Major Depressive Disorder. Dr Ross also
acts as a co-investigator and study therapist for phase II/III trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy
for PTSD, and is an expert in cannabinoid therapeutics and PI of a NIDA funded study of CBD
administration in patients with chronic radicular pain on chronic opioid therapy.
Kim Sibille, PhD
Dr. Sibille is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, and Anesthesiology, Division of Pain Medicine in the College of Medicine at the University of Florida, and the Director of the Pain TRAIL, Translational Research in Assessment and Intervention Lab. She has a background in Exercise Science, a Master’s degree in Counselor Education, a Doctoral degree in Psychology/Clinical Psychology with concentrations in Neuropsychology and Health Psychology, and Post-Doctoral training in Clinical/Translational Pain Research. Her lab investigates the biological interface of chronic pain, resilience, and factors contributing to health disparities. In order to appreciate the physiological burden of chronic pain, an improved characterization of chronic pain was needed. Her lab developed a Chronic Pain Stage measure that combines pain frequency, intensity, duration, and total pain sites resulting in five stages of chronic pain. Higher chronic pain stages are consistently associated with greater physiological burden and worse cognitive and physical functioning. Importantly, they also show that differences in pain-related health outcomes extend beyond chronic pain symptoms and are significantly related to intra-individual and socioenvironmental factors. As chronic pain is a whole person experience, a biomarker for chronic pain should ideally be a whole person measure. For the past 13 years, Dr. Sibille’s lab has been investigating allostatic load, an indicator of whole person physiological functioning. Allostatic load reflects the cumulative burden of stress and buffering from protective factors and can be assessed by measures of brain structure, a stress system clinical composite, and telomere length. They and others have shown there is a measurable physiological footprint from chronic pain, pain-related risk factors, and socioenvironmental stress. Counterbalancing physiological loading factors, resilience factors are not only associated with lower pain-related symptoms; Dr. Sibille’s lab has reported a physiological buffering effect. An extensive array of factors can be protective including those that are psychosocial and others that are biobehavioral. The Sibille lab is currently involved in research to develop a biologically predictive and clinically applicable pain resilience index. The goals of these combined research efforts are to: 1) improve the understanding of the biological interface of chronic pain, resilience, and social determinants of health; 2) develop a practical clinical composite tool for assessing and evaluating chronic pain treatment interventions; and 3) identify strategies to prevent, reduce or ameliorate chronic pain and enhance functioning. Dr. Sibille is currently funded by the National Institute on Aging with previous research support from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Pain Society, the International Association for the Study of Pain, and the University of Florida Clinical and Translational Science Institute.