Julie starts a new job

I started my new position this week, at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. So I am now officially a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Although the main medical campus is in Baltimore (on one side is downtown, on the other side is an area that is being "reclaimed"...), the MPRC is located in Catonsville, a quaint little suburb town on the southwest side of Baltimore, just outside the beltway. Apparently Catonsville used to be the site of many Baltimorans' summer homes, because it is situated on the highest hill around and offered the best view around. The cities have grown to meet each other but as you drive up the back hill to my work, you can still see the inner harbor in the distance. Anyway, the MPRC is actually on the campus of the 2nd oldest continuously operating mental hospital in the country, Spring Grove, which was founded in 1797 (the oldest one is in Boston).

In the slideshow, the 1st picture is the MPRC, the 2nd picture is the creepy old, boarded up asylum (a national historic landmark, so the state won't tear it down, but full of asbestos, so not safe to use), and the 3rd just shows some of the other buildings on the campus. It's actually a very picturesque setting, but it's a little creepy with all the old buildings and patients walking around, talking to themselves. Every morning in fact I'll be walking through a lobby where schizophrenics wait for their appointments. When I took Brent for a visit to my future workplace (I was still pregnant, but there was some paperwork to be dealt with and my new mentor wanted to take us to lunch in historic Ellicott City)), Brent remarked that the place was "really cool but looked like somewhere they should shoot a horror film". In fact, we found out that the Blair Witch Project was filmed there! However (little piece of trivia here), Blair, MD, is actually an hour west of Catonsville, past Frederick.

The work I'll be doing will be supervised by Dr. Jim Koenig, a top-notch researcher and so far a very chill guy. He has developed the prenatal stress rodent model of schizophrenia, and my work will focus on how the prefrontal cortex is altered by prenatal stress, and what this can tell us about cognitive deficits (like working memory and executive function problems) in schizophrenia. I'm very excited to start on these projects!