About
Dr. Natasia Courchesne-Krak is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. She has training and collaboration with partners from diverse backgrounds and expertise which include psychiatry, clinical psychology, epidemiology, pediatrics, and genetics, and has worked with multiple data modalities.
Dr. Courchesne-Krak has experience using electronic health record data to investigate the relationship between substance use disorders (e.g., alcohol, opioids, nicotine, stimulants, cannabis), healthcare service utilization, and health outcomes in the general population and pregnant women. She also has experience investigating the impact of co-occurring prenatal alcohol and drug exposure on child neurodevelopment and neurobehavioral functioning.
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Dr. Courchesne-Krak's current work aims to investigate the sex-differentiated genetic contributions to substance use disorders and other externalizing behaviors across the lifespan (childhood through later life stages) using a variety of bioinformatics approaches and large-scale population genomic datasets.
Over the next decade, Dr. Courchesne-Krak seeks to continue her work in the field of psychiatric genetics, with the goal of furthering our biological understanding of substance use disorders and other externalizing behaviors to inform future work and clinical practice.
Grants and Awards
2023-2025: New Investigator Award, Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP), Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego.
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2024-2024: Research Training Award, Forefronts in Substance Abuse During Pregnancy, Postpartum, & Pediatrics, National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), La Jolla, California.
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2022-2024: Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, Interdisciplinary Research Fellowship in NeuroAIDS, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), University of California, San Diego.
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2022-2022: Early Investigator Award, International Society of Psychiatric Genetics (ISPG), 2022 World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics (WCPG) in Florence, Italy.
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2022-2022: Junior Investigator Award, Research Society on Alcoholism (RSA), 45th Annual RSA Scientific meeting in Orlando, Florida.
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2021-2021: Junior Investigator Award, Research Society on Alcoholism (RSA), Annual RSA Scientific virtual meeting.
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2020-2022: Postdoctoral T32 Training Grant Fellowship Award, National Institutional Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), San Diego State University.
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2020-2020: Research Training Award, Frontiers in Addiction Research and Pregnancy, National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), San Diego, California
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2017-2017: Graduate Student Travel Fund – Student Success Fee, San Diego State University.