Marissa A. Smail

Marissa A. Smail studies how the brain responds to stress and trauma, with a particular focus on brain regions like the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, specific cell types (such as parvalbumin interneurons), and molecular changes linked to psychiatric disorders. Her work combines animal models of stress, grief, and chemotherapy exposure with molecular and genomic techniques (like single-cell RNA sequencing) to identify biological mechanisms underlying stress resilience and psychiatric illness. This research may interest students curious about the neurobiology of stress, trauma, and mental health, using both behavioral and molecular/genomic approaches.

Publication output has fluctuated over the last decade, rising to a peak around 2021, dipping in 2022–2023, then increasing again in 2024–2025, suggesting an active but variable publishing pace rather than steady linear growth.

Generated by claude-sonnet-5 from public bibliographic data · Jul 20, 2026