News
2019 Election Results
April 23, 2019
Congratulations to Frances Champagne, SBN President-Elect, and to Charlotte Cornil, SBN Secretary.
Frances A. Champagne, SBN President-Elect
Frances will serve a six-year term: two years as President-Elect, two years as President, and two years as Past President.
Frances A. Champagne, received an M.Sc. in Psychiatry (1999) and Ph.D. in Neuroscience (2004) from McGill University and is currently a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. She is a member of the UT Austin Institute for Neuroscience Graduate Studies Committee and Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology Graduate Committee as well as a Faculty Research Associate at the UT Austin Population Research Center. Dr. Champagne is a world leader within the evolving field of behavioral epigenetics — the study of how life experiences lead to behavioral and neurobiological variation through epigenetic factors — and she has made ground-breaking contributions to our understanding of the interplay between genes and environments occurring during development. Dr. Champagne’s current research program is focused on addressing: 1) the epigenetic impact of perinatal exposures (i.e. stress. toxins), 2) the role of mother-infant interactions in shaping epigenetic outcomes in offspring, 3) the interplay between mothers, fathers, and offspring in the epigenetic transmission of behavior across generations (i.e. epigenetic inheritance), 4) resilience to the effects of early life adversity. Dr. Champagne combines studies in animal models and humans to determine the contribution of these molecular marks to neurobiological, behavioral and psychiatric outcomes. In 2007, Dr. Champagne received an NIH Director's New Innovator Award and is currently funded by the NIH, NIMH, NIEHS, and NICHD. In 2009, she received the Frank A. Beach Young Investigator Award from the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology (SBN) and also received the Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award in 2013 for excellence in teaching and mentoring. Dr. Champagne teaches a variety of undergraduate/graduate courses, including: “The Developing Brain”, “Inheritance”, “Neurobiology of Reproductive Behavior” and “Ethics, Genetics and the Brain”. She was the Program Committee Chair for the 2012 Annual SBN Meeting and has been a Program Committee Member for the Annual SBN Meeting since 2017.
Charlotte Cornil, SBN Secretary
Charlotte will serve a two-year term as Secretary.
Charlotte Cornil graduated from the University of Liège (Belgium), spent 3 years in the US as a post-doc and currently directs the Behavioral Neuroendocrinology lab at the University of Liège. Her research examines how the rapid, membrane initiated, and the long-term genomic actions of sex steroids cooperate to orchestrate complex behaviors both during development and in adulthood. One aspect of this research concerns the study of brain steroid metabolism and, in particular, the rapid regulation of brain estrogen synthesis by aromatase. She has worked with a variety of animal species and her lab currently run projects on fish, birds and rodents. She has been a member of SBN since 2002. She has been an active member of the society since 2009 serving in the educational and program committees and chairing the membership committee for the past 4 years. If elected as secretary she will work with the executive committee and other active members to continue attracting new members, increase the participation of post-docs and junior faculty in the society and annual meeting. Although the rise in modern technologies will help us in our endeavor to decipher the roles and mechanisms of hormonal action on behavior, she will defend the value of the comparative approach. She would also like to attract and connect with more international members.