Meet Dr. Willeumier

Kristen Willeumier, Ph.D., is a neuroscientist with research expertise in neurobiology and neuroimaging. Dr. Willeumier holds a B.A. in Psychology from Boston College, an M.S. in Physiological Science from the UCLA College of Letters and Sciences and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She conducted her masters level graduate research in the laboratory of neuroendocrinology under Dr. Barney Schlinger. Her doctoral research was conducted in the laboratory of neurophysiology under Dr. Felix Schweitzer at UCLA and the laboratory of neurogenetics under Dr. Stefan Pulst at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center using optical imaging tools to investigate synaptic vesicle recycling and the role of protein ubiquitination in regulating this process. Her focus was on parkin, an E3 ubiquitin ligase encoded by PARK2, a gene implicated in autosomal recessive juvenile parkinsonism. She was a postdoctoral scientist in the Department of Neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles where she continued her work focused on the genetic analysis of neurological disorders. In recognition of her research at UCLA and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, she was the recipient of a National Research Service Award Fellowship from the National Institutes of Health. She has presented her work at national and international scientific meetings including the Society for Neuroscience and the Gordon Research Conference in Hong Kong, China.

From 2009-2016, Dr. Willeumier served as the Director of Neuroimaging and Clinical Research for the Amen Clinics, where she led the efforts in utilizing imaging technologies to understand the neurobiological signatures underlying psychiatric disorders. In this capacity, she oversaw many pioneering studies, including a clinical research trial investigating the long-term effects of repetitive subconcussive impacts in National Football League players. Subsequent work focused on therapeutic approaches to rehabilitate brain function in athletes with mild traumatic brain injury and the application of machine learning algorithms to neuroimaging data to improve the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders. Dr. Willeumier is widely published in peer-reviewed medical journals including The Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Nature Translational Psychiatry, The Journal of Neuroscience, and The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Areas of published research include mild traumatic brain injury, posttraumatic stress disorder, autism, neuroimaging biomarkers predictive of suicide, functional neuroimaging in obesity, sex differences in brain function, neuroimaging of nutraceutical interventions, treatment outcomes in psychiatry and brain rehabilitation.