Dr. Rajita Sinha stands as a preeminent leader in the field of clinical neuroscience with her interdisciplinary expertise spanning psychology, psychiatry, and neurobiology. She currently holds the prestigious Foundations Fund Endowed Professorship in Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine while maintaining professorial appointments in both Neuroscience and Child Study. As Deputy Chair of Psychiatry for Psychology and Chief of the Psychology Section in Psychiatry, she provides critical leadership across multiple departments while directing the Yale Interdisciplinary Stress Center that she founded to advance understanding of stress neurobiology. Dr. Sinha completed her doctoral training at Yale University with additional specialization in clinical psychology, building upon her foundational PhD work from Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center to create a unique research program that bridges basic neuroscience with clinical applications.
Dr. Sinha's groundbreaking research has fundamentally reshaped our understanding of stress neurobiology and its critical role in addiction pathophysiology through the development of innovative stress, pain, and craving provocation paradigms that have become methodological standards in the field. Her work has generated over 250 peer-reviewed publications with substantial scholarly impact reflected in more than 50,000 citations, particularly her influential research on the neural mechanisms linking stress to relapse vulnerability in substance use disorders. She has pioneered translational approaches that connect laboratory findings to clinical outcomes, developing novel pharmacologic and integrative behavioral interventions that address chronic stress and reduce addiction relapse risk with measurable improvements in treatment efficacy. Her leadership in NIH-funded research projects spanning over two decades has established definitive evidence for sex-specific neurobiological pathways that differentiate resilient versus vulnerable responses to stress and trauma.
Beyond her research program, Dr. Sinha has significantly shaped the national landscape of addiction science through her service on the NIH/NIAAA Advisory Council and the Expert Scientific Panel for the NIH Common Fund's Science of Behavior Change program. Her expertise is regularly sought by major media outlets including NBC Nightly News, CNN Health, and The Wall Street Journal where she provides authoritative commentary on stress, trauma, and addiction mechanisms for public education. As a dedicated mentor, she has trained numerous researchers who have gone on to establish independent programs in stress and addiction neuroscience while continuing her own research to develop more effective interventions that target the neurobiological underpinnings of stress-related pathology with the potential to transform clinical management of addiction and related chronic conditions. Dr. Sinha remains at the forefront of her field through ongoing investigations into novel treatment approaches that target the neurobiological underpinnings of stress-related pathology with the potential to transform clinical management of addiction and related chronic conditions.
