Current Fellows

Raul Bejarano-Romero is a third-year PhD student in Interdisciplinary Research on Substance Use (IRSU) at SDSU/UCSD. He earned his B.A. in Political Science from the National & Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and his M.A in Political Science from the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE). His research interests are in cannabis regulation, blood-borne disease prevention among people who inject drugs, harm reduction, human rights in the context of the war on drugs, and organized crime in Mexico. As a senior drug research fellow at CIDE’s Central Region Drug Policy Program (PPD), he led a program that sought to measure the size and value of the marijuana markets in Mexico. This initiative has received funding by the Open Society Foundations (OSF) and is a pioneering tool to orient policy makers in the path forward towards regulation. Currently, he is conducting research on the role that community violence exposure plays on HIV/HCV risk behaviors and treatment access among people who inject drugs in the Tijuana/San Diego region. 

Dr. Marybel Robledo Gonzalez is an Assistant Project Scientist in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Gonzalez’s research investigates bio-social ecological models of risk and resilience for alcohol use, and cognitive and mental health among youth. Dr. Gonzalez’s research also focuses on the social determinants of alcohol use and other substance use among Latinx/Hispanic youth and potential co-emerging mental health disparities in adolescence. She is trained as a developmental neurocognitive scientist, obtaining her doctorate in Cognitive Science at UCSD. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Dr. Gonzalez has worked extensively on large neurocognitive studies of adolescent substance use, including the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) ® Study and the National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) Study. She is the recipient of the UC Berkeley undergraduate Regents’ and Chancellor’s Scholarship, the Cota-Robles Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Award. 

Danielle Levitt is an Assistant Professor of Exercise Physiology in the Department of Kinesiology & Sport Management at Texas Tech University. She earned her PhD in Biology with a concentration in Exercise Physiology at the University of North Texas and completed a T32/F32 postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Physiology and the Comprehensive Alcohol-HIV/AIDS Research Center at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans. Her long-term research goal is to understand the mechanisms by which lifestyle factors, contribute to metabolic dysfunction and to identify therapeutic strategies to improve metabolic outcomes in affected individuals. Currently, her foci are: 1) alcohol-mediated impairment of myoblast bioenergetic function and its impact on skeletal muscle regeneration; 2) relationships between impaired mitochondrial and glycolytic function and risk for metabolic disease and 3) interorgan crosstalk and the impacts of alcohol and exercise. Her primary goal for eIRTI is to work with her tri-mentoring team and successfully compete for R-series funding to elucidate mechanisms underlying alcohol-mediated metabolic changes that may contribute to development of type 2 diabetes with a focus on interorgan communication. 

Raymond L. Moody is a clinical psychologist engaged in research that examines the impact of social and psychological stress on substance use and sexual behavior among marginalized groups, including sexual and gender minorities. Ray earned his PhD in Health Psychology & Clinical Science from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2020 and is currently completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the T32 Substance Abuse Epidemiology Training Program at Columbia. In August 2023, he will join the University of Connecticut as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development & Family Sciences. His R36-funded dissertation examined executive attention and emotion regulation as mediating mechanisms linking syndemic conditions and HIV transmission risk behavior among sexual minority men. His current projects focus on understanding health inequities among individuals living at the intersections of multiple forms of marginalization. He has published more than 25 publications in peer-reviewed journals and is developing a K-award application to examine the multilevel impacts of intersecting stigmas on substance use and sexual health among Hispanic sexual minority men who use drugs. His eIRTI goals include advancing his grant writing skills, strengthening his K application, and networking with Hispanic substance use experts. 

Nathan Vardeleon is a second year PhD student attending Texas A&M University’s College of Psychological & Brain Sciences in the Behavioral & Cellular Neuroscience Program under the lab and mentorship of Dr. Carlos Bolaños. As a graduate student he has taken part in several projects that investigate the long- and short-term effects of clinical treatments of commonly prescribed therapeutics such as: methylphenidate, alprazolam, and fluoxetine, and how these pretreatments in adolescence may create physiological and behavioral consequences in adulthood. His current project seeks to elucidate the physiological and behavioral side effects of a co-treatment of a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) such as fluoxetine (Prozac), and an anxiolytic such as alprazolam (Xanax) as there has been an increase in the polypharmacy among adolescents in the past decade. His long-term career goal is to continue in the pursuit of knowledge of the underlying mechanism(s) of drug use and abuse and continue to grow as a thorough and diligent neuroscientist.