Wednesday, March 4, 2026
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Foege South Auditorium (Genome Sciences) & Zoom Webinar

Fields of Research

• Neuromodulation
• Intracellular Signaling
• In Vivo Pharmacology
• Neural Circuits & Behavior
• Molecular Basis of Neuropsychiatic disease

Research Summary

Neuromodulatory Circuits and GPCR signaling in Affective Behavior

Research Statement

Studies molecular, cellular and system’s level dissection of neuromodulatory circuits in affective behaviors (e.g., reward-aversion, addiction, anxiety-depression, stress, pain). The laboratory uses multidisciplinary approaches including: optogenetic, molecular-biochemical, pharmacological, physiological, in vivo imaging, and computational methods. The lab is actively engaged in bioengineering methods to develop optically-sensitive signaling tools and wireless opto-electronics for detecting-modulating neuronal activity in behaving animals.

About the Speaker

Michael R. Bruchas, PhD
Professor
Center for the Neurobiology of Addiction, Pain, and Emotion
Professor of Anesthesiology and Pharmacology
University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Michael received his BS in biology and his PhD in pharmacology from Creighton University in 2004 and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience at the University of Washington, where he examined how endogenous opioids impact stress, depression, and addiction. Dr. Bruchas’s laboratory focuses on how brain circuits are wired, how they communicate via GPCR – mediated neuromodulation, and to develop new neuroscience tools to aide in that process.  His laboratory’s discoveries have been published in Nature, Science, Cell, and Nature Neuroscience, Neuron and have been featured on Public Radio, in The Wall Street Journal, Nature, NBC News, The New Yorker, The Smithsonian, and Popular Science along with many international popular science publications.  He has awards including the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award, an NIH EUREKA Award, the Young Investigator Award from the International Narcotics Research Conference, and multiple NIH BRAIN Initiatives for tool development in dissecting brain circuits.  In 2018, he was awarded the NIH-MERIT award from NIDA, the Rising Star Award from the Mahoney Institute of Neuroscience, and the SfN – Jacob P. Waletzky Memorial Award for cutting-edge research in addiction.  Dr. Bruchas is also a co-founder of a neurotechnology company Neurolux.  Dr. Bruchas resides with his wife and daughter in Fremont (Seattle) and loves travel, food, craft beer and wine, all types of music, books, the outdoors, and cycling.