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Dr. Cynthia Kuhn is currently visiting Perth to further develop collaborations and share her expertise. Dr. Kuhn will be presenting at Telethon Kids Institute on 23 June 2017 at 12-1pm. The title of her presentation is "Brain maturation during adolescence and reward / threat systems" .

Dr. Kuhn is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience. She received her BA in Biology from Stanford University and Ph.D. in Pharmacology at Duke.  She has been a faculty member at Duke since 1978.  She studies how reproductive and stress hormones influence the actions of addictive drugs on the developing brain, and rodent models of psychiatric disease in including anxiety, depression and anorexia nervosa.  Dr. Kuhn also collaborates with researchers in Biological Psychiatry on studies of how stress and personality contribute to cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk.

Dr. Kuhn is committed to translating science for the nonscientist, especially through the book “Buzzed” which she co-authored with Wilkie Wilson and Scott Swartzwelder. She has taught Pharmacology to medical students for thirty years and teaches an undergraduate course entitled “Drugs and the Brain.”  She is active internationally in drug abuse education. Dr Kuhn is committed to mentoring students at all levels, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.   She has trained 13 predoctoral, 10 postdoctoral trainees and more than 80 undergraduates, 25% of whom are underrepresented minorities.  She has been the PI of the Pharmacological Sciences Training Program for 25 years.

Media references

Professor Florian Daniel Zepf (UWA Centre and Discipline of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy) (+61 8 9340 8176)