Courtney A Miller

Courtney A. Miller is an American neuroscientist and Professor of the Department of Molecular Medicine at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida. Miller investigates the biological basis of neurological and neuropsychiatric diseases and develops novel therapeutics based on her mechanistic discoveries. Early life and education Miller completed her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Santa Barbara majoring in Biopsychology. After graduating in 1999, Miller started her PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California, Irvine. Under the mentorship of Dr. John F. Marshall, Miller studied the biological basis of drug addiction in rodent models. Since relapse is common in drug abusers, Miller sought to understand the biological basis of this phenomenon. Miller first dissected the neural circuits that are activated during re-exposure to an environment previously associated with cocaine. Miller found that, during expression of drug induced place preference, the Basolateral Amygdala complex provides more excitatory drive to the Nucleus Accumbens Core than the Prelimbic cortex. In a first author paper in Neuron, Miller reported that inhibiting ERK kinase MEK prevents the activation of ERK in the Nucleus Accumbens Core and inhibits conditioned place preference. Her findings suggested that memories of drug-cue pairings can be pharmacologically or therapeutically ameliorated to potentially reduce relapse in drug abusers. Miller completed her PhD in 2005 and then worked as a Research Scientist at Cenomed Pharmaceuticals. In 2006, Miller began a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alabama Birmingham and held the title of scientific director of the Behavior Core at the University of Alabama Birmingham from 2006 to 2009. At UAB, Miller studied neuroepigenetics and found that DNA methylation along with the process of histone acetylation regulates memory formation and synaptic plasticity. Also while at UAB, Miller completed a degree in Technology Ventures at the UAB School of Business from 2007 to 2008. Career and research In 2009, Miller was appointed an assistant professorship at The Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida. In 2013, Miller was granted tenure and now remains at Scripps conducting research on neurological diseases with a specific focus on drug addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder.