Cheryl Frye
Professor, Department of Psychology, The University at Albany-SUNY
USA
Dr. Cheryl Frye is behavioral neuroscientist and professor in the Department of Psychology. Dr. Frye is committed to her student′s intellectual and professional development and the award recognizes her superior work in advising and mentoring students. She provides rigorous training in research skills to a wide range of students, from those in high school to doctoral candidates. She regularly encourages her students to present their research at professional meetings and she was a founding member of N.E.U.R.O.N., the Northeast Undergraduate Research Organization in Neuroscience. Eight of her students have won University at Albany Presidential Awards for Undergraduate Research. Cheryl Frye recipient of Dean′s awards for outstanding achievement in teaching, 2009. Cheryl Frye was awarded the CAS Dean′s award for excellence in student mentoring.
The focus of my research program is determining how steroid hormones work in the brain and influence behavior (see press release). My research primarily has focused on non-traditional or "non-genomic" actions of steroid hormones (termed neurosteroids) and their role in mediating reproductive behavior in rodents. Because hormones are essential for mating, we have used reproductive behavior as an indication of the effectiveness of different experimental hormone manipulations. As diverse actions of steroidsmechanisms are revealed through our reproductive behavior experiments, we then examine the role of different actions of steroids on developmental processes (puberty, pregnancy, aging, etc) and in mediating behaviorally-relevant processes, such as anxiety, learning, neuroprotection, throughout the lifespan. As such, our research has made important contributions to understanding sex differences and the role of hormones in the etiology, exacerbation and/or treatment of many clinically-relevant conditions including depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, Alzheimers disease and epilepsy.
