Ana Clara Bobadilla

Ana Clara was born in La Plata, Argentina. She was raised between Madrid, Spain, and Paris, France. Ana Clara obtained her Ph.D. in neurosciences from the Pierre & Marie Curie University (now Sorbonne University) in Paris. Her thesis work, performed under the supervision of Dr. Jean-Pol Tassin, focused on understanding the long-lasting neurobiological changes of noradrenergic and serotonergic systems induced by repeated exposure to drugs of abuse using the behavioral sensitization model in mice. She then completed her post-doctoral training in the Kalivas lab at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC, Charleston, SC, USA), where she studied glutamatergic alterations driving drug seeking. In 2020, Ana Clara joined the University of Wyoming (Laramie, WY) as an Assistant Professor and moved her lab to Colorado State University in 2023. She currently investigates the neurobiological mechanisms of relapse to drugs. Specifically, she characterizes the specific ensembles of neurons linked to reward-seeking behavior. By establishing whether addictive drugs hijack the network coding for biological rewards, her research aims to advance fundamental understanding of goal-directed behaviors and the disorders altering them.