The Center for Scientific Review at the National Institutes of Health has announced that Magdalena R. Naylor, M.D., Ph.D., University of Vermont professor of psychiatry and Fletcher Allen psychiatrist, has been selected to serve as a member of the Behavioral Medicine, Interventions and Outcomes Study Section through June 30, 2019.

As an NIH study section member, Naylor will participate in assuring the quality of the NIH peer review process and will be responsible for reviewing grant applications, making recommendations on these applications to the appropriate NIH national advisory council or board and surveying the status of research in the field of behavioral medicine.

Study section members are selected on the basis of their demonstrated competence and achievement in their scientific discipline as evidenced by the quality of their research accomplishments, publications in scientific journals, and other significant scientific activities, achievements and honors. According to the NIH, this role also requires mature judgment and objectivity as well as the ability to work effectively in a group.

Naylor, who joined UVM/Fletcher Allen in 1993, also serves as Director of the MindBody Medicine Clinic and Director of the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit in the Department of Psychiatry.  She received her M.D. and Ph.D. from the Warsaw Medical Academy in Poland and completed her training in Psychiatry at the Duke University Medical Center.

Her research has focused on the neuroendocrinology of mood disorders, with special emphasis on depression and cognition in menopausal women. She has also focused attention on the development of novel modes of treatment for chronic pain, and alcohol dependence, and is a founding member of the UVM Functional Brain Imaging Program, where she studies the brain effects of mindfulness meditation utilizing fMRI. As a clinician, she specializes in the treatment of affective disorders and coping with pain. Naylor is also a member of the nonprofit organization Imaging the World and does research in Uganda under the direction of UVM Professor of Radiology Dr. Kristen DeStigter.  Interested in how mind, body and spiritual issues differ in various cultural contexts, Naylor has traveled extensively in Asia and Africa, including India, Nepal, Indonesia, Tibet, Kenya and Uganda, among others.