The Training Grant in the Neuroscience of Mental Health supported me during the last year of my PhD program in Physiology and Biophysics at UIC.My thesis project, conducted in Dr Guidotti’s laboratory at UIC, started from the observation that smoking is much more common in schizophrenia patients than in nonschizophrenic suggesting that nicotine might be used by these patients as an attempt to self-medicate. Schizophrenia patients overexpress DNA methyltransferase 1 (DNMT1) in telencephalic GABAergic interneurons suggesting that the increase of DNMT1 expression in these neurons might be responsible for the downregulation of reelin and GAD67 observed in brains of schizophrenia patients. As part ofmy thesis project, I collected data supporting the hypothesis that the agonists, downregulates the expression of DNMT1 in mouse frontal cortex. The reduction of DNMT1 is accompanied, in the same brain area, by a decrease of the methylation level of GAD67 promoter and the upregulation of GAD67 expression. These findings suggested that drugs that target DNMT1 and therefore the methylation status of specific gene promoters, such as GAD67, might be further investigated for the treatment of schizophrenia. After my graduation in 2008, I joined the laboratory of Dr. DiDonato at Children’s Memorial Hospital (Children's Memorial Research Center, Northwestern University) as a Postdoctoral Associate, where I used different genetic mouse models of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) to test candidate drugs for the treatment of SMA. From 2012-2017,Iwasa Postdoctoral Research Associate in the laboratory of Dr. Amy Lasek, at the Psychiatric Institute at UIC, where I investigated the role of estrogen in addiction-related behaviors, with the final goal to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying sex differences in drug abuse. In2017, I decided to leave my position at UIC to pursue a career in medical communication, and I joined Succinct Choice (currently OPEN Health Medical Communication) to work as a Medical Writer. In this position I work on the preparation of manuscripts for publication and on the development of other medical communication material, with a specific focus on clinical studies. Overall, I feel that the training grant contributed to my career development and helped me to reach my long-term career goals. It gave me the opportunity to continue working on my research project and to collect data to complete my thesis and to write a manuscript that was later published in PNAS. The training grant also allowed me to participate in the Society for Neuroscience Annual meeting in San Diego where I presented my data in a poster presentation. My participation in this conference gave me the opportunity to meet other scientists, exchange ideas, and attend interesting seminars.