Dominika Burek

My graduate work primarily focuses on endogenous opioids in pain-induced negative affect. Specifically, I study how the kappa opioid receptor throughout the brain modulates anxiety- and depressive-like behavior in mouse models of inflammatory and neuropathic pain. I am also involved in another project probing the role of the calcium-gated potassium channel SK2 in morphine conditioned place preference.

I attended Colgate University, graduating in 2014 with a B.A. in cellular neuroscience with a senior thesis examining how antidepressants moderate glial inflammatory response. I spent two post-baccalaureate years as a research technician in Dr. Eric Nestler’s Laboratory at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, assisting on projects modeling the epigenetics of stress and cocaine addiction.

When I am not in lab I enjoy walking and hiking nature trails, and reading fiction and creative nonfiction.