User:Erin Umberg/sandbox

Erin Umberg was born on April 18, 1983, in Vicenza, Italy to parents Thomas Umberg and Robin Umberg. She attended grade school and high school in Southern California and Northern Virginia, respectively. In 2001, she received a Congressional nomination to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point. She was medically discharged in 2003 after being diagnosed with Lupus. She was ranked first in her class.

After West Point, Erin transferred to Stanford University where she majored in Human Biology, with a concentration in Neuroscience. She continued at Stanford for graduate school where she studied Psychology, again with a Neuroscience concentration. Erin worked at Stanford School of Medicine in Pediatric Neurology and Adolescent Medicine.

In 2009, Erin returned to graduate school at Tufts University on a Provost's Scholars Fellowship. She entered the PhD program for Molecular Physiology and Pharmacology and studied the dopaminergic pathways involved in addiction and obesity. She co-authored a chapter in the textbook Diet, Brain, & Behavior, "The Reward Deficiency Hypothesis". She has also been published in the scientific journal, Physiology and Behavior, for her article: "The Neurobiology of Aversive States" ; and in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, for her article: "From disordered eating to addiction: the "food drug" in bulimia nervosa".

Erin Umberg is currently the Assistant Director at the UC Irvine Newkirk Center for Science and Society. http://www.newkirkcenter.uci.edu/about_NewkirkCenter.html