Rate My Professor J. David Jentsch

J. David Jentsch is the SUNY Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Psychology Department at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He received his PhD in Neurobiology from Yale University School of Medicine in 1999 and his BA in Behavioral Biology from The Johns Hopkins University in 1992. Prior to joining Binghamton University in 2015 as Empire Innovation Professor, he held faculty positions at the University of California, Los Angeles (2001-2016), rising to Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, and serving as Associate Director for Research at the Brain Research Institute (2009-2014). Earlier roles include postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh (1999-2000) and associate research scientist at Yale (2000-2001). At Binghamton, he is Founding Director of the Brain and Body Imaging Research Center (since 2020), Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Sciences (since 2021), and Program Director of the NIH T32 training grant on Development and Neuroadaptations in Alcohol and Addictions (since 2017).

Jentsch's academic interests center on the neurobiological origins of individual vulnerability to drug addiction and alcoholism within the field of Psychology. His research examines genetic and environmental factors influencing impulsivity, incentive motivation, reinforcement learning, and reward processing, using advanced mouse genetic populations and human neuroimaging techniques. Notable publications include “Impulsivity resulting from frontostriatal dysfunction in drug abuse: implications for the control of behavior by reward-related stimuli” (Psychopharmacology, 1999), “Genetic pathways regulating the longitudinal acquisition of cocaine self-administration in a panel of inbred and recombinant-inbred mice” (Cell Reports, 2023), and “Reversal learning phenotypes associate with novel genetic loci in diversity outbred mice” (Addiction Neuroscience, 2022). He has been honored with the 2012 Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the 2011 Jacob P. Waletzky Award for Innovative Research in Drug Addiction and Alcoholism from the Society for Neuroscience, and the 2010 Joseph Cochin Young Investigator Award from the College on the Problems of Drug Dependence. Jentsch contributes to the field through editorial roles on Psychopharmacology, Behavioral Neuroscience, and Journal of Neuroscience, and extensive service on NIH study sections for NIDA and NIAAA.