Dr. Lillian Brady
Assistant Professor University of Alabama, Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine
Postdoctoral Researcher Vanderbilt University
PhD University of Alabama, Birmingham
Dr. Lillian Brady’s interest in research began before her interest in neuroscience blossomed. From Oak Ridge, Tennessee - the headquarters site for the Manhattan Project - Lillian grew up amongst a town of plutonium and uranium plant workers who introduced her to the idea of conducting science as a career. Moving to Jackson, Mississippi as a teenager, Lillian, who was strong in math and science, participated in her high school’s Base Pair program which paired her with a University of Mississippi Medical Center professor to conduct research. From then on Lillian knew she wanted to pursue a career involving science. Guidance from encouraging mentors along with Lillian’s curiosity and flexibility led her to where she is today, a new Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Heersink School of Medicine, setting up a lab focused on investigating sex differences and hormonal regulation of dopamine circuit dynamics in substance use disorders.
As an undergraduate at Alcorn State University, the nation’s oldest land-grant HBCU, Lillian majored in chemistry and was on the premed track. She worked as a biomedical research intern every summer, at Alcorn and as a part of the CIC Summer Research Opportunities Program, where she learned fundamental laboratory skills. When she didn’t do well on the MCAT and was not accepted into medical school, Lillian quickly pivoted – leveraging her research experience to get a job as an intern in environmental research in Mississippi after graduating. While working there, she learned about a new Master’s program in biotechnology at Alcorn and decided to enroll in the program. Upon completing her Master’s, Lillian felt inspired to continue in her pursuit of a career in research and entered the doctoral program in Cell, Molecular, and Developmental Biology at the UAB. Test taking still proved to be challenging for Lillian at UAB, causing her to retake a couple first year classes. This unfortunately made it difficult to find a doctoral lab to join - some PIs were concerned that she might not stay in the program long enough to make it worth the investment. However, Lillian persevered and found a home in the lab of Dr. Lynn Dobrunz with additional support from UAB’s Neuroscience Roadmap Scholars program - a program designed to engage and retain underrepresented students in the field of neuroscience. Today, Lillian cites the representation and support from the directors Dr. Farah Lubin and Dr. Michelle Grey and the Roadmap Scholars community as indispensable in her development as a neuroscientist. “Representation matters,” she said in our interview. Doctors Lubin and Grey were some of the only black women neuroscientists at UAB and “they gave me the idea that I could do this if I wanted to.”
At UAB, Lillian had the opportunity to rotate in four labs. She joined a neuroscience lab for her first rotation, thinking it would be fun to explore a new area before pursuing more familiar biotech-related research. However, she quickly realized that she loved the combination of biology and behavior, and the significant impact neuroscience research could have on people’s health. Lillian ultimately joined Dr. Dobrunz’s neurophysiology lab, where she studied dopamine modulation and regulation of inhibitory synaptic transmission in the hippocampus as it relates to learning and memory in a mouse model of aspects of schizophrenia and autism. Her research revealed that altered regulation of inhibition by specific dopamine receptors underlied circuit dysfunction in disorders of excitatory/inhibitory synaptic transmission imbalances. From this experience, Lillian developed a curiosity about neuromodulators, which led her to pursue a postdoctoral position in a lab where she could continue studying dopamine.
Toward the end of graduate school, Lillian was not convinced that she wanted to be an academic. Inspired by her Roadmap Scholar director Dr. Lubin, Lillian applied and was accepted into Vanderbilt’s inaugural cohort of fellows in the Academic Pathway Program in 2017, thinking “if I get in, I’ll go.” After realizing that the initial postdoctoral lab she joined was not the right fit, Lillian, with the support of her mentoring committee, bravely changed postdoc labs. Wanting to experience more hands-on mentorship, Lillian joined Dr. Erin Calipari’s nascent lab where she could explore the neuroscience of associative learning - learning from rewarding and negative stimuli - which is a process that is dysregulated in many neuropsychiatric disorders, including addiction, depression, and anxiety. Here, she learned voltammetry, a technique that detects rapid fluctuations of neurotransmitter concentrations, such as dopamine, using microelectrodes. Through Dr. Calipari’s hands-on training and mentorship, Lillian was able to significantly contribute to the lab’s first publication. While playing with this approach in ex vivo brain slices, Lillian discovered that dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens - a key area of the brain’s reward system - responded differently to modulation of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in males versus females. Lillian’s research drew attention to an important issue. If females have demonstrable differences in reward processing and motivated behavior compared to males, then the approach to developing pharmacotherapies to treat related disorders, such as Substance Use Disorder (of which women are a particularly vulnerable population), should be tailored for these sex differences. Lillian urges that scientists cannot make the assumption that what works in males will work the same in females - an assumption that, until recently, most people made. Her research continues to champion women’s health by focusing on demystifying sex-specific mechanisms that govern sex differences in reward processing.
Lillian received the competitive NIH K99/R00 MOSAIC Pathway to Independence Award in 2021, supporting her final years of postdoctoral research and the launch of her own lab. After searching for a professorship that suited her desire to stay in the south, she received a compelling offer from the UAB Heersink School of Medicine to join the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurobiology as an Assistant Professor. Lillian happily accepted, excited to be in the UAB community again with the supportive faculty who had trained and mentored her in graduate school. Today, Lillian is in the process of setting up her lab. When asked how it’s going, she said, laughing, that “it’s been crazy… starting a lab is no joke.” She is grateful that her prior mentors are so willing to share resources as she sets up the lab, and is excited to dive into experiments and mentoring.
Lillian has benefited from the careful guidance and role modeling of many mentors throughout her career, and she feels fortunate to be working as a professor at the same institution that fostered and supported her talents as a PhD student. She cites the mentor-mentee relationship as the most important part of one's training, even more important than the research you produce. When it comes to being a mentor herself, she has learned that everyone is different and that flexibility and adaptation is key – “we can’t mentor everyone the same”, Lillian urged in our interview. She has now co-authored several publications on mentoring and DEIA in STEM. Overall, Lillian’s story makes clear how pivotal perseverance, resilience, flexibility, and finding a supportive community are to one’s development as a neuroscientist.
Listen to Rianne’s full interview with Lillian on January 16th, 2024 below!
