BBH Colloquium Schedule
All events take place from 4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. in 110 Henderson Building
October 20, 2025
Miryoung Lee, PhD, Associate Professor at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston School of Public Health
Talk Title: Impacts of Cardiometabolic Diseases in the Cameron County Hispanic Cohort Study
Dr. Lee is trained as an epidemiologist and biostatistician. Dr. Lee's research interests are in examining epigenetic biomarkers, environmental risk factors including social determinants of health in relation to cardiometabolic diseases in children and adults. She has ongoing research projects on investigating the longitudinal associations between telomere length and telomerase activity, cellular senescence biomarkers, and obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease risks among non-Hispanic whites and Mexican Americans.
October 27, 2025
Alexandra Brewis, PhD, Regents Professor and President’s Professor at School of Human Evolution and Social Change & Center for Global Health at Arizona State University
Talk Title: Water Insecurity, Distress, and Depression: A Global Perspective
SUMMARY: Living with household water insecurity is consistently associated with depression and other negative mental health effects. Yet the amount or quality of water does not well explain what is observed in field-based studies. For example, men and women living in the same house with the same inadequate water source can show highly divergent mental health outcomes. Based on our team’s recent studies with water insecure households in Haiti, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United States, we have been able to identify a range of mechanisms related to the social and cultural meanings of water that help explain why water insecurity is so consistently depressing. These include the capacities of water insecurity to trigger conflict, reveal inequities, inflict shame, and as an index social failure. Living with water is inherently stressful, but understanding the complex bases of that stress provides a means to develop innovative and effective solutions to a growing challenge faced by billions globally.
November 1, 2025
CANCELLED DUE TO GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN
Andrew Johnson, PhD, Senior Investigator, Hemostasis and Platelet Biology, The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NIH)
Talk Title: TBD
Andrew Johnson earned a B.S. in vertebrate physiology from the Pennsylvania State University in 1998. He subsequently worked on gene regulatory research in C. elegans and neuroelectrophysiology in rodents before entering graduate school in 2003. He earned a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences from Ohio State University in 2007 with dual emphases in bioinformatics and pharmacogenomics. He came to the NIH for post-doctoral training in 2007, became a tenure track investigator in 2012 and was promoted to a tenured Senior Investigator in 2019. Dr. Johnson has been nominated for and received numerous awards including the NHLBI Lenfant Fellowship, the NHLBI Orloff Science Award, the CHARGE Consortium Early Career Investigator Award and Genome Technology’s Young Investigator Award, and was elected as a Fellow of the American Heart Association. He has published more than 210 papers and has served as a reviewer for more than 65 journals. His full publication record is found on NCBI(external link). Dr. Johnson has served on numerous committees of the Framingham Heart Study, the American Heart Association, and the International Society for Thrombosis and Haemostasis. He currently chairs the NHLBI TOPMed Hematology and Hemostasis Working Group and the Framingham Heart Study Genetic Steering Committee. He is also a member of the American Society for Human Genetics, the International Society for Computational Biology and the International Society for Thrombosis and Haemostasis.
December 1, 2025
Patricia "Sue" Grigson-Kennedy, MS, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Neuroscience and Experimental Therapeutics, Penn State Neuroscience Institute
Talk Title: Penn State Addiction Center for Translation and testing of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists for the treatment of opioid use disorder in rats and humans
Dr. Sue Grigson’s research focuses on substance abuse and addiction. She has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for more than 28 years and is the recipient of an NIH MERIT award, which recognizes the top tier of research funded by the NIH.
She is the inaugural director of Penn State Addiction Center for Translation.
Rescheduled to January 26, 2026
Lisa Christian, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Health, The Ohio State University Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research
Talk Title: Sexual Minority Health: Linking Chronic Stress, Inflammation, and Epigenetic Aging
Lisa Christian is a professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Health and a member of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research where she has been a faculty member since 2008. She received her PhD in clinical health psychology from The Ohio State University after completing internship at the University of Florida Health Science Center. Dr. Christian’s research has been funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR). Her clinical work focuses on cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders, particularly in women. In addition to these roles, she serves as the Medical Student Advocate within the College of Medicine, helping to advance a positive learning environment. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling, vegetarian cooking, reading, and spending time with her two children and two Bernedoodles. As part of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research, directed by Lisa Christian, PhD, the Stress, Behavioral Immunology, and Health Lab examines how exposures to chronic stress, mood disorders, anxiety, and sleep disturbance interact in a bi-directional manner with the immune and neuroendocrine system to affect physical and mental health. Our studies use psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) research approaches to examine how stress “gets under the skin” among individuals caregiving for a spouse with dementia, people coping with cancer, pregnant women, as well as people exposed to chronic stress or discrimination related to race/ethnicity, sexual minority status, or financial strain. An ultimate goal of these studies is to address health disparities and inform behavioral interventions by identifying key pathways by which stress affects health.
