Rate My Professor Steve Boehm

Stephen L. Boehm, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology in the School of Science at Indiana University Indianapolis. He serves as Chair of the Department of Psychology, Executive Director of the IU Institute for Human Health and Wellbeing, and Director of the undergraduate neuroscience program. Boehm earned his B.A. in Psychology from the University of Northern Colorado in 1996 and his Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience from Oregon Health & Science University in Portland in 2002. From 2002 to 2005, he conducted postdoctoral research in Behavioral and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of Texas at Austin. Recruited to Indiana University in 2009 from Binghamton University, Boehm has established a prominent research program in addiction neuroscience affiliated with the Indiana Alcohol Research Center.

Boehm's research investigates how developmental, genetic, and environmental factors influence binge-like alcohol drinking, compulsive alcohol consumption, and sensitivity to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) using mouse models. His Boehm Lab explores the neurobiology of these behaviors, including the role of dorsal striatal AMPA receptors, effects of low-level lead exposure, adolescent edible cannabis consumption, high-fat diet impacts on cognition, and experimental treatments for Toxoplasma gondii. Funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, and IU initiatives, the lab employs genetic models, site-specific microinjections, behavioral assays, and protein analyses. Boehm has published extensively, including 'Altered excitatory transmission in striatal medium spiny neurons after chronic ethanol consumption in selectively bred crossed High-Alcohol Preferring mice' (Neuropharmacology, 2021), 'Three-weeks binge-like alcohol drinking generates increased motivation for alcohol and robust compulsive-like quinine-resistant alcohol drinking in male and female C57BL/6J mice' (Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 2021), 'Systemic administration of the AMPA receptor antagonist, NBQX, reduces alcohol drinking in male C57BL/6J, but female or High Alcohol Preferring (HAP), mice' (Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 2020), 'Self-administration of edible Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol and associated behavioral effects in mice' (Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2019), and 'Acute cannabinoids produce robust anxiety-like and locomotor effects in mice, but long-term consequences are age- and sex-dependent' (Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2019). He mentors graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and undergraduates in his lab.