Melissa R. Warden, Ph.D.

Associate Professor (tenured)

Department of Translational Neurosciences

College of Medicine - Phoenix

The University of Arizona

Melissa R. Warden is an Associate Professor in the Department of Translational Neurosciences at the University of Arizona. She received an A.B. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Systems Neuroscience from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she investigated prefrontal neuronal encoding of multi-item short-term memory with Earl K. Miller. As a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University with Karl Deisseroth she studied cortical control of neuromodulatory systems in motivated behavior. Prior to moving to the University of Arizona, she was faculty in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University. She has received a number of awards including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, a Robertson Neuroscience Investigator Award from the New York Stem Cell Foundation, a NARSAD Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, a Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Research Foundation, and a Research Grant from the Whitehall Foundation.  Her research at the University of Arizona integrates imaging, neurophysiological, optogenetic, and behavioral approaches to study the neural circuits regulating cognition and emotion and their dysfunction.