Aspiring Psychiatrist Cassandra Kooiker Advances Mental Health Through Neuroscience

How does early-life adversity get encoded into your brain, impacting reward circuitries and increasing the risk of mental illness? How can we prevent and address this in at-risk children?

These are some of the questions Cassandra Kooiker has been researching as an MD/PhD student in the UC Irvine School of Medicine. “In children, there’s so much potential for change, because the brain is so malleable at that point,” says Kooiker, who has co-authored more than a handful of papers exploring early-life experiences and brain circuitry. “It can have profound effects throughout the rest of their lives.”

With the long-term goal of being a physician-scientist who develops new therapies to positively impact the lives of her patients, Kooiker was drawn to UC Irvine’s Medical Scientist Training Program. MSTP trains individuals to not only understand and contribute to advances in research but to also directly apply those advances to medical care. “I want to use my experience with patients,” she says, “to gain insight into unanswered questions relevant to providing more meaningful care.”

From Nature to Neuroscience

As a child, Kooiker was known as the “bug girl” in her family. “I was the one who’d climb up trees to find caterpillars to bring inside to show to my mom — whether she liked it or not,” says Kooiker, who grew up near the woods in Michigan. “My parents bought me a little green microscope, and I’d spend all day outdoors trying to find cool things to examine.”

It was this fascination with the natural world around her, further encouraged through frequent family camping trips, that Kooiker says sparked her love for science. By the end of high school, she had set her sights on becoming a physician.

Then, as an undergrad at the University of Michigan, plans shifted slightly. “I was originally interested in cancer biology and wanted to become an oncologist, so I did research in a neuro-oncology lab,” she says. But it was the “neuro” part of the research that captured her attention, so she took an introductory course to learn more. “I fell in love with it!”

She went on to earn her BS in neuroscience and then spent two years doing related research at Rockefeller University in New York City. “By then,” she says, “I was totally hooked.”

Blending Research & Clinical Care

Kooiker knew she wanted to earn an MD, but it was her undergraduate research advisor Xing Fan, MD, PhD, who convinced her to add on the PhD in neuroscience. “He had done his MD and PhD separately, at different institutions and at different times, but he spoke highly of what this allowed him to do in terms of both research and clinical care.” She liked the idea of conducting basic neuroscience research while working with patients. “He convinced me to go the physician-scientist route,” she says.

When applying to medical school, UC Irvine was an obvious choice for Kooiker, and not just for the sunny Southern California campus — though that was certainly a draw. “UC Irvine has a very strong interdepartmental neuroscience program,” she explains. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to pursue beyond the mechanisms behind mental health disorders, but I knew I’d find a fantastic lab here.”

She found the right fit when she met Tallie Z. Baram, MD, PhD, a physician, scientist and child neurologist. Kooiker’s research in New York had focused on how the external world influences mental health, and the Baram Lab looks at external influences specifically during childhood. “Dr. Baram got me on the bandwagon of studying early life,” says Kooiker.

The Baram Lab explores the influence of early-life experiences on developing brain circuits and on the underlying plasticity mechanisms that promote health or disease. The goal is then to identify how best to translate the lab’s discoveries into improved clinical care.

“It’s a really unique privilege to be a scientist and to thrive on curiosity,” says Kooiker, whose favorite part of being a graduate student was learning to formulate her ideas into testable hypotheses.

Powering Through with Persistence

Completing an MD/PhD program is an extremely time-consuming endeavor, but Kooiker still carves out time for her favorite hobbies: rock climbing and pottery.

Her top climbing spot is Red Rocks, near Las Vegas. More locally, she enjoys Malibu Creek State Park, near Los Angeles, with its sheer rock walls on either side of the picturesque creek. She also joined a pottery studio in Costa Mesa after taking a few classes. “Pottery-making is addictive!” Taking breaks helps her power through her demanding MD/PhD program, but she also looks to role models for inspiration.

“It takes a lot of persistence to become a physician-scientist, and whenever it feels impossible, I look to the incredible mentors who have accomplished the things that I dream of doing,” says Kooiker. “Dr. Baram is a huge role model as a physician-scientist who found her place in science and medicine when there were still few women. She’s a fantastic example of what you can accomplish through persistence.”

As Kooiker wraps up her studies and forges her path in academic psychiatry, she looks forward to finding new avenues for overcoming early-life adversity.

“I’m currently applying to research-track psychiatry residency programs,” she says. Through research, she hopes to gain a deeper understanding of why patients experience certain mental health disorders so that she can identify targets for interventions. “The ultimate dream is to then apply the new therapies that I develop to actually impact the lives of my patients.”

— Shani Murray