Susan G. Amara

Susan G. Amara, Ph.D., is the Scientific Director of the National Institute of Mental Health intramural research program at NIH.  She joined NIMH after serving as the Thomas Detre Professor of Neurobiology and Distinguished Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.  Work in her laboratory has focused on the structure, function, and cellular physiology of neurotransmitter transporters, including the biogenic amine transporters, major targets for psychostimulant drugs and antidepressants.  She received a BS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University and a PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of California, San Diego and has previously held faculty positions at Yale University School of Medicine, at the Vollum Institute in Portland Oregon and as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Yale and in Oregon.  Dr. Amara has received the Burroughs Wellcome Hitchings Award in drug discovery, the Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award, the ASPET John Jacob Abel Award, a McKnight Neuroscience Investigator Award, a MERIT Award from NIDA, a NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Award, the Julius Axelrod Award from ASPET and the Julius Axelrod Prize from Society for Neuroscience.  She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2004), a fellow of the AAAS (2007) and is a past-President of the Society for Neuroscience (2011).