About
Maria Ironside D.Phil. is a Research Associate Professor at TU and a Principal Investigator at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research where she directs the Mechanisms of Depression and Anxiety Laboratory (MoDAL). Ironside’s main interests include parsing process dysfunction in comorbid anxiety and depression. She uses behavioral and neuroimaging measures to investigate acute effects of neuromodulation and pharmacological agents on threat sensitivity in comorbid depression and anxiety to establish potential biomarkers of treatment response. In 2023 she was awarded a $2.1m R01 grant from the National Institute for Mental Health to conduct a mechanistic neuroimaging study of threat sensitivity in anxious and non-anxious depression. The goal of this research program is to improve the characterization of treatment targets in depressive subtypes, inform patient selection for future clinical trials and, ultimately, treatment selection in the clinic.
Awards and honors
- 2020, Alfred Pope Award
- 2018, Brainbox Award
- 2018, ADAA Alies Muskin Career Development Leadership Program Leadership Award
- 2018, The Rappaport Mental Health Scholar Award
- 2017, The John and Charlene Madison Cassidy Fellowship in Translational Neuroscience
Education
- M.Sc., University College London
- M.Sc., University of London, Birkbeck
- D.Phil., University of Oxford
Research interests and areas of expertise
- Neuroimaging
- Neuromodulation
- Major depressive disorder
- Anxiety disorders