Dr. Millie Rincón-Cortés
Postdoctoral Fellow Brain Institute at the University of Pittsburgh
PhD in Neuroscience New York University
If you had asked Dr. Millie Rincón-Cortés when she was a high schooler in Puerto Rico what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would’ve told you that she wanted to become a psychiatrist. Little did she know that she would eventually become an accomplished neuroscientist- a career that she didn’t know even existed until late in her undergraduate degree. Millie reflects, “[science has] been the way that I have been able to finance and live my life ever since I was a college sophomore. Once I realized I could do this as my profession forever, that was the new goal.”
While she was looking for ways to financially support herself as an undergraduate student, Millie stumbled upon the Sloan Undergraduate Research Program, which offered students stipends while they conducted research projects. At the time, using the research program to kickstart her scientific career was not on her mind at all; she was just happy to have found a way to cover living expenses while also getting some research experience. As a Sloan Undergraduate Fellow attending her first scientific conference, the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS), Millie found herself at New York University’s (NYU) PhD program booth envisioning herself as a future graduate student. With the help of an application fee waiver, which was generously provided by Dr. Joel Oppenheim, the Dean of the Sackler Institute for Biomedical Sciences at the time, Millie made her way from Puerto Rico to New York City to become a Neuroscience graduate student. Without the financial stability and the research exposure provided by her fellowship, Millie would likely not have pursued, or even known about the option to pursue, a career in science. Thus, she is a strong advocate for these undergraduate research fellowships so that other minority students like her, who otherwise may not have had the opportunity, may also explore a scientific path.
Through her graduate research in Dr. Regina Sullivan’s lab at NYU and eventually into her postdoctoral work in Dr. Anthony Grace’s lab at the University of Pittsburgh, Millie became a strong advocate for studying the intersection of stress interactions and female neurobiology within the context of psychiatric disease. As a researcher employing rodent models relevant to the study of depression, Millie was shocked at how little research had focused on female animals even though previous clinical literature in humans suggested that depression is much more prevalent and severe in females than in males. This was a glaring gap in our understanding of the disease that she decided to address by studying the sex differences in depression-related behaviors in rat models as well as how stress affects the brain’s reward center- the dopaminergic system. One of Millie’s findings is that in rats, the female dopamine system is more sensitive than that in males to the effects of acute stress. But after years in the field, and a funded F32 grant to study sex differences in stress-induced dopamine downregulation, Millie still doesn’t consider herself an expert on sex differences. “It’s way more complicated than we previously knew and I’m just happy I got to work on a tiny piece of it”.
Millie is now a senior postdoctoral fellow who is preparing for a transition to a faculty position. While she is already brimming with ideas for what her lab will be studying, she will likely focus on her first neuroscience love, development. She explains that many neuropsychiatric disorders are now regarded as neurodevelopmental disorders with origins in early life. Millie not only plans to continue to study the effects of early life stress, but she also has exciting ideas about how to reverse those effects through environmental and social interventions. Part of her graduate work showed that early social deficits are a predictive marker for later life depression-like behaviors, but also that interactions with a developmentally normative rat can “fix” some of the behavioral deficits of a rat who had undergone early life adversity. Does this mean that healthy social relationships can mitigate some of the effects of early life trauma in humans? Moreover, does this generalize to other psychiatric disorders characterized by impaired social function? Indeed, Millie is interested in understanding how to harness social intervention to circumvent pathways and pathologies programmed by developmental stress exposure, hoping that this work could eventually be translated into an accessible and effective therapy for humans.
In addition to focusing on the relationship between developmental stress exposure and social behavior, Millie believes in the importance of studying females across reproductive conditions and the natural baseline changes that they undergo. For example, Millie describes “postpartum blues,” which occurs in up to 80% of first time mothers. She goes on to explain that unlike postpartum depression, “postpartum blues” are characterized by mild, transient anxiety and depression for the first 10 days of postpartum but eventually dissipate. Millie just published work suggesting that the brains of virgin female rats are quite different from the brains of postpartum rats. Compared to their virgin female counterparts, postpartum rats have alterations in dopaminergic functions shortly after giving birth. Postpartum rats also exhibit reduced social behavior as well as increased behavioral despair compared with virgin females, behaviors consistent with elements of the negative affect associated with postpartum blues in humans. But there are still large gaps in knowledge that Millie wants to fill, including how adverse postpartum conditions interact with these normative changes to influence the maternal brain and behavior, which in turn influences offspring development.
Millie is not only an accomplished scientist, but she is also a strong advocate for minority representation in STEM. Millie fought her way through graduate school as a woman of color. From insensitive remarks by her fellow classmates to professors who underestimated her, Millie has overcome countless challenges and has emerged more determined than ever to make science more accessible to minorities. In accordance, she has served as an Ad Hoc Member on the minority task force for the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). Moreover, she is currently appointed to the inaugural Diversity and Ethics Committee of the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society (IBNS), where she works to promote inclusion of minorities in the scientific community and to encourage them to take on leadership positions. She is passionate about promoting opportunities for those who would otherwise not be privileged enough to be included in the conversation, because that is exactly how she got her own start in the world of academic science.
Millie has come a long way from the high school student in Puerto Rico unaware of the possibility of a career in neuroscience. She wouldn’t have believed then that her groundbreaking work would give her the opportunity to travel around the world for scientific conferences, exploring new cities and learning about new cultures. As an advocate for minority representation in STEM, Millie hopes to pave the way for others to follow in her footsteps. In her science, Millie also has taken on a role of advocacy, championing the vital importance of studying females in biomedical research. The future Rincón-Cortés lab will undoubtedly continue to fill the gaps in knowledge of the postpartum brain and advance our understanding of how early life events influence neuropsychiatric disorders.
Check out Nancy’s interview with Millie in December, 2019 below!
