Matthew Osborne Fellowship
The Matthew Osborne Postdoctoral Fellowship program was created through a generous private donation to increase the number of qualified scientists entering the field of addiction. The Fellowship program was designed to be broad in scope, with potential fellows spanning fundamental to translational to clinical research. Based on the individual applicant and their career aspirations, each Matthew Osborne Fellow will be placed in an existing addiction-focused research lab at the University of Maryland School of Medicine for one year. The Fellowship will entail both an immersive research experience, as well as structured mentorship inclusive of training in grant writing, manuscript development, and the promotion and tenure process. The 2025 – 2026 recipient of the Matthew Osborne Fellowship is Catherine Haga, PhD.
To donate to the Matthew Osborne Research Fellowship, click here. Thank you!
Catherine Haga, PhD
Dr. Catherine Haga's research is fundamentally focused on dissecting the neural circuit-specific effects of opioid signaling to better understand the mechanisms underlying opioid use disorders. She established her academic foundation by studying the impacts of early life exposure to drugs of addiction, work that provided key insights into how drug exposure alters neural circuit development and function. As a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Barbara Juarez, Dr. Haga is now focused on OUD in adults, bridging her expertise in electrophysiology with innovative, circuit-dissecting techniques. Her current work centers on defining how diverse populations of dopamine neurons within the ventral tegmental area are differentially regulated by opioids to modulate drug taking and seeking behaviors. The Matthew Osborne Postdoctoral Fellowship allows her to apply her skills to tackle crucial, unresolved questions in the broader addiction field, moving beyond generalized views of circuit function to gain a granular understanding of how opioids impact reward pathways susceptible to dysfunction in OUD.
Read Dr. Haga's Full Bio
Previous Matthew Osborne Research Fellows
2024 – 2025 Matthew Osborne Research Fellows
Sophia Weber, PhD
Dr. Sophia Weber graduated from the University of Washington in 2017 with a BS in Biology. During her undergraduate career, she worked in Dr. Jeremy Clark’s lab investigating the effects of adolescent alcohol exposure on adult decision-making. After graduation, she completed a postbaccalaureate internship in the NIDA IRP program, assisting Dr. Bruce Hope and postdoctoral fellow Rajtarun Madangopal in studying and manipulating active neurons during drug-related behaviors. Sophia then joined the Behavior and Systems Neuroscience graduate program at Oregon Health & Science University, where she earned her Ph.D. in June 2024, researching the role of dopamine in cocaine craving under Dr. Marina Wolf. In July 2024, she joined Dr. Marco Venniro’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Her long-term research interest is in understanding how the brain encodes learning at the synaptic and systems level, particularly maladaptive learning leading to substance use disorder. In Dr. Venniro’s lab, Dr. Weber will use her experience in vivo recording with the social volitional abstinence model to investigate how alternative rewards alter drug-seeking behaviors and underlying neural circuits.
Read Dr. Weber's Full Bio
Jimmy Olusakin, PhD
Dr. Jimmy Olusakin's research focuses on understanding how early life exposure to drugs and stress affects brain development. He aims to establish an independent research lab to investigate the impact of these adversities on prefrontal cortical control over subcortical stress-coping and reward circuits, a critical area due to the rising use of addictive substances by pregnant women. In 2015, he received a PhD fellowship from the Paris School of Neuroscience (ENP) and LaBex. His thesis in Dr. Patricia Gaspar’s lab at the Institut du Fer à Moulin in Paris explored how exposure to the antidepressant fluoxetine during development increases the risk of anxiety-like behaviors in adulthood, focusing on serotonin’s role in prefrontal cortex development. Dr. Olusakin's PhD was awarded in September 2019. In 2020, Dr, Olusakin joined Dr. Mary Kay Lobo’s lab at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, to study the effects of perinatal opioid exposure on adolescent brain development. His research identified transcriptional changes in reward-related brain areas due to fentanyl exposure. Currently, Dr. Olusakin is leading projects examining the combined effects of maternal stress and cannabis on brain development, using a model of chronic stress and THC administration. Our findings reveal sex-related behavioral and transcriptional adaptations in adolescent mice exposed to these early life challenges.