By Michelle Jaffee; Photos by Jackie Hart
Paola Giusti-Rodriguez, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the University of Florida’s Department of Psychiatry, where she studies genetic psychiatric disorders and neurodevelopmental disorders. An investigator with UF’s Center for OCD, Anxiety and Related Disorders, Giusti-Rodriguez hopes to advance understanding of conditions including autism and schizophrenia.
Q. What inspired you to focus on this area of neuroscience?
A. When I was finishing my Ph.D., the first larger psychiatric genetic studies from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium were just coming out. I saw a lot of opportunity in moving into an emerging area of research that was going to have a lot of growth — it seemed ripe for jumping in. This drove me to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship in psychiatric genetics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Patrick Sullivan, who was a cofounder of the PGC and remains one of its leaders. It became evident that to really understand the new findings, we needed complementary data. Since then, it’s just been a real expansion of the genetics of psychiatric disorders, across many different disorders.
Q. What’s the most exciting discovery you’ve made so far?
A. Despite the incredible expansion of our understanding of psychiatric genetics over the past 15-plus years, many regions and global populations are not well represented in these studies. To improve participation of other populations, I cofounded the Latin American Genomics Consortium (LAGC) in 2019. What was initially a group of 25 researchers now includes over 200 members from nine countries, with a leadership team and disorder-specific work groups that provide younger researchers with leadership and collaborative opportunities. In the past five-plus years, we have seen how the establishment of the LAGC has had real impacts both inside and outside of the region. In 2022, we secured sponsorship for LAGC early-career investigators (ECIs) to participate in the World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics. In 2023, we helped organize a two-day genomic analysis workshop that sponsored 20 trainees from low- and middle-income countries who now lead trainings across their regions. And we recently published our first large review, in Nature Genetics, on the current state of psychiatric genetics in Latin American populations. Additional collaborative publications are now underway. Having a more representative sample improves statistical power and your ability to pinpoint precise genes involved in a psychiatric disorder — you have data that is more broadly applicable.
Q. How do you envision your research advancing neurological disease treatments?
A. We are applying functional genomics tools, which use the complete set of DNA instructions, to various psychiatric disorders. Since I arrived at UF in 2021, I have broadened my studies from schizophrenia to also focus on Tourette syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Collaborating with the Center for Autism and Neurodevelopment, we hope over the next 10 years to obtain and study genetic samples from research participants to get to the neuroscience and biology of some of these complex disorders. There are a lot of tools that can help us probe the non-coding genome to better interpret both existing and emerging genetic data. The overarching goal is to develop new, targeted therapies for patients.
Q. What makes working in your lab different than other research environments?
A. I am a big believer in the power of team science to advance our projects. This enabled my first group of very talented undergrads to effectively work together to generate lots of key data. Given the current makeup of the lab — one postdoc, one grad student and several undergrads — we rely on close partnerships to complete experiments. Right now we are collaborating on a project with the Martínez-Rivera Lab and the Setlow Lab. The students will be able to run our next set of experiments with minimal input. I am deeply invested in the future success of my trainees and have hosted informal virtual career chats featuring previous mentees and inspiring role models who have shared their career advice and perspectives. I try to connect students with external collaborators so they can expand their scientific and academic networks.
Q. What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
A. A lot of cooking and eating! As a multicultural family, we enjoy trying out new recipes and restaurants. Our boys, who are 7 and 11, like to help out in the kitchen and are happy to give their own restaurant recommendations — wish I were joking! Their favorite dish is Ragù Bolognese. In the past, I have hosted my lab for build-your-own homemade pizzas. I love to cook, and I think there’s a lot of science in the recipes.