Dr. Karen Szumlinski
Crossing paths with people who struggle with addiction can inspire deeply compelling bodies of research. Such is the case for Dr. Karen Szumlinski, a Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at UC Santa Barbara.
Full Professor University of California, Santa Barbara
Postdoctoral Researcher Medical University of South Carolina
PhD in Neuroscience and Neuropharmacology Albany Medical College
MS McMaster University
Karen’s career trajectory has been strongly influenced by her personal experiences. Inspired by her volunteer work with autistic children during high school, Karen set out to become a special needs pediatrician, with a focus on developmental disorders and autism. As a pre-med undergraduate student at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, Karen began taking courses about neuroscience and behavior. Simultaneously, she began dating an individual in recovery for a substance use disorder. When her partner relapsed, she witnessed how all-encompassing addiction, and caring for someone with addiction, can be. Over the year they dated, Karen’s grades began to suffer. While she was able to bring her grades back up and re-focus on work after the relationship ended, the experience stayed with Karen, shaping her future research trajectory.
Karen began to draw connections between her first-hand observations of repetitive behaviors associated with substance abuse (namely, peyote consumption) and certain behaviors she had observed in children with autism. She sought out one of her professors to ask if there could be a connection. He said that there was: serotonin. Impressed with her observations and her avid curiosity, the professor invited Karen to work in his lab, and from the moment she started, she was hooked. She realized that a career in biomedical research would allow her to ask and answer her own burning questions while hopefully making discoveries that could help people like her ex-partner. Wanting to pursue her doctorate in the neuroscience of addiction, Karen applied to three Canadian universities that were home to premier addiction researchers. However, she was not accepted to any of these programs. Instead, after graduating from McMaster, she became a Master’s student in the lab of her esteemed behavioral pharmacology professor, Dr. Henry Szechtman, who specialized in behavioral sensitization as a model of schizophrenia, intent on proving that she could excel in graduate school.
Karen’s interest in studying the neuroscience of addiction ultimately led her to Albany Medical College in New York for a graduate school interview. This was the first time she experienced an interviewer taking the time to understand her story as a person and a researcher, including the reason for her fluctuating college grades. She ultimately was accepted and decided to pursue her PhD in this program because it was evident that they genuinely cared about their students’ development as scientists.
For her PhD, Karen joined the lab of Dr. Stanley Glick. Her research focused on exploring how ibogaine, a psychoactive drug with psychedelic properties, could be used to treat addiction. She hypothesized that ibogaine might reverse the sensitization of the dopamine system that happens with repeated use of drugs of abuse. Karen found that ibogaine, as well as related compounds, reduced the expression of dopamine sensitization which might make these drugs less reinforcing. To aid with running these large behavioral studies, Karen took the initiative to recruit undergraduate students from the State University of New York Albany to join her project. Thanks to her perseverance, curiosity, and productive team of undergrads, Karen completed her PhD in three years, with 15 publications to her credit.
For her postdoctoral research, Karen initially wanted to return to Canada. However, due to the changing research landscape and a decrease in science funding in Canada at the time, this was not an option. She instead pursued a postdoc position with Dr. Peter Kalivas at the Medical University of South Carolina. After years of studying dopamine and addiction, Karen was inspired by Dr. Kalivas to explore alternative addiction mechanisms. He told her that if dopamine were the only neurotransmitter involved, we would have “solved addiction” by now. Since there were still plenty of unanswered questions, it was time to explore how other major neurotransmitter systems could be contributing to drug craving and seeking. This led Karen to glutamate, the brain’s major excitatory neurotransmitter. Glutamatergic activity from the frontal cortex facilitates learning, attention, decision-making, and reward evaluation. Karen hypothesized that expression of glutamate receptors in reward, emotion, and memory-related brain regions might influence drug seeking behavior. Indeed, she found that, in response to drug use, Homer proteins––which are important for keeping glutamate receptors in place within neurons—change their affinity for glutamate receptors. Furthermore, she found that when the gene encoding the Homer2 protein is knocked out, both cocaine and alcohol sensitivity is increased. Karen stayed in the Kalivas lab for four years with the support of a Canadian postdoctoral fellowship. Fortunately, Dr. Kalivas was very supportive of Karen taking her project on Homer proteins and addiction as a base from which to start her own lab, so she began applying for faculty positions.
It initially took a bit of time to find a position that would suit the career needs of both her and her neuroscientist fiance, Dr. Tod Kippin. This is a common issue scientist couples face—the “two-body problem”. Fortunately, UC Santa Barbara had two positions open that suited them well. In March 2005 they moved and began their careers as professors together. Karen fondly jokes about them being “science mom and dad” to their co-mentored students. When Karen and Tod eventually married and had children of their own, as one of six couples in the department, they were happy that the community was exceptionally pro-family.
Now a Full Professor in the Psychological and Brain Sciences department at UC Santa Barbara, Karen has continued to study how chronic exposure to drugs of abuse, particularly psychomotor stimulants and alcohol, biochemically influence the brain and behavior. She still studies the role of glutamate signaling in addiction, but has also expanded her lab’s work into exploring other neuropsychiatric disorders associated with addiction, including psychosis and depression.
As a proponent of “the work-life balance beam”, Karen believes that there is no such thing as perfectly balancing work and life; one may dominate over the other at any given moment. When work isn’t dominating, Karen coaches her children’s basketball team, runs her kids around to their various activities, and enjoys her time with her dogs (she has 4). She finds rest and relaxation when watching basketball, sharing in a good meal, or exploring Disneyland.
As a PI, Karen has adopted the philosophy that allowed her to pursue a career in science in the first place. She selects students based on their personal interest and ability to ask thoughtful questions more than their grades. She also aims to support students in the way that her PhD program supported her, putting time and effort into understanding her trainees’ experiences and needs. This philosophy has not gone unnoticed among her community; her lab is highly popular, with 50 students on the waitlist to join! It goes to show that impactful science with thoughtful mentorship is a winning combination.
Find out more about Karen and her lab’s research here.
Listen to Rianne’s full interview with Karen in March 2023 below!
