Dr. Jacqueline F. McGinty, Ph.D. - 2026

Dr. Jacqueline (Jakie) McGinty is a neuroscientist who has studied the neurobiology of substance use disorders for over 40 years. She received her B.A. in Psychology from Connecticut College in New London, CT and her Ph.D. in Anatomy & Cell Biology from SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, NY in 1978. Her did her postdoctoral training in the neuropsychopharmacology lab of Floyd Bloom, M.D. in the Arthur Vining Davis Center at The Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA. Her initial faculty appointment was at the East Carolina U School of Medicine in 1983. She developed her NIH NIDA-supported research program there studying psychostimulant effects on opioid peptides in the hippocampus and striatum.  She left as a Professor in 1999 to join the nascent Dept of Physiology & Neuroscience at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC. At MUSC, she developed a completely different line of research studying the effects of BDNF on prefrontal cortical circuits in animals with a cocaine self administration and relapse history in collaboration with members of the Neurobiology of Addiction Research Center (NARC) later  called the Center for Opioid and Cocaine Addiction (COCA) led by Dr. Peter Kalivas.  Jakie went to her first INRC meeting as a postdoc in the 1980s. After a significant hiatus from INRC, she was invited to organize the 2008 INRC meeting in Charleston, SC with an addiction theme. The friendships Jakie has made in the INRC connectome over the years are some of the sweetest highlights that have accompanied her career as a neuroscientist.