Francisco Romo-Nava, MD, PhD
Associate Chief Research Officer
Lindner Center of HOPE
Dr. Romo-Nava is a physician-scientist studying the role of brain-body interaction pathways in the context of psychiatric disorders with a “Neuroscience of the Body” approach. His work has a focus on the circadian system and spinal interoceptive pathways in affective and eating disorders.
Dr. Romo-Nava is Associate Chief Research Officer at the Lindner Center of Hope and Associate Professor at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at the University of Cincinnati. He graduated as MD at the Universidad Autonoma de San Luis Potosi, Mexico. He then completed his residency training in Psychiatry and a clinical fellowship in affective disorders at the National Institute of Psychiatry and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) and served as attending Psychiatrist at the Affective Disorders Clinic at the National Institute of Psychiatry. Dr. Romo-Nava later served as Vice-Chair of Research at the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the UNAM. Dr. Romo-Nava then graduated with honors obtaining the PhD in Biomedical Sciences with a focus in neuroscience and hypothalamic integration mechanisms at the Institute for Biomedical Research at the UNAM. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Division of Bipolar Disorder Research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at the University of Cincinnati.
Dr. Romo-Nava has been PI and Co-I in several clinical and translational studies and author of scientific publications. He has received several academic distinctions and research grants to fund his research, including a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Phased Innovation R61/33 grant, a NIMH K23 Career Development Award, the 2017 NARSAD Young Investigator Award by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, and a 2016 Pilot Translational Research Program Award by the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at the University of Cincinnati. He is a Research Co-Lead at the Breakthrough Discoveries for thriving with Bipolar Disorder (BD2) Integrated Network at the Lindner Center of Hope/ University of Cincinnati site. He is also the inventor of USPTO patent #10,857,356 titled “transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation for treatment of psychiatric disorders”.
National Institute of Mental Health Acknowledges Dr. Romo-Nava with Highly Coveted Award