Associate Professor Nastassja Koen

Associate Professor

MBChB UCT, PhD (Psychiatry) UCT

Position

  • Associate Professor and Head: Division of Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry
  • Co-Head: Psychiatric Genetics Group, Brain-Behaviour Unit (BBU), UCT Neuroscience Institute
  • Co-Director: South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) Unit on Risk and Resilience in Mental Disorders

Research Areas

  • Genomic, epigenomic and transcriptomic neurobiology of trauma-related disorders
  • Transgenerational effects of traumatic stress and related disorders
  • Psychiatric genomics in Africa

Current projects

  • Transgenerational effects of maternal stressors: Investigating the role of infant gene expression
  • Understanding the transgenerational epigenetic effect of maternal psychosocial trauma exposure on infants via lncRNA-sequencing
  • Childhood adversity, DNA methylation, and psychopathology symptoms: A longitudinal study of sensitive periods and chrono-epigenetics

Publications:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=nastassja+koen