Samuel W. Centanni, PhD
Accepting the Neuropsychopharmacology Editor’s Award (NEATOR) at the 2021 American College of Neuropsychopharmacology Annual Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Sam Centanni is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Translational Neuroscience at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, where his lab studies how insular cortex circuits shape the brain’s response to stress and alcohol. He trained as a slice electrophysiologist in the lab of Dr. L. Judson Chandler at the Medical University of South Carolina, studying how adolescent alcohol exposure alters prefrontal cortex function in adulthood. As a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Danny Winder at Vanderbilt University, he examined how BNST circuits, endocannabinoid signaling, and CRF shape stress responses and chronic alcohol effects. There he became an early adopter of in vivo fiber photometry and helped develop a whole-brain light sheet imaging pipeline, two approaches that now anchor the lab’s work. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Winter Conference on Brain Research, where he has organized several symposia on the insular cortex. He is also a member of the Wake Forest Translational Alcohol Research Center, the Center for Addiction Research, and the Cardiovascular Sciences Center.
Education & Training
- 2015-2020
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Vanderbilt University (Advisor: Danny Winder, PhD)
- 2015
- PhD, Biomedical Neuroscience, Medical University of South Carolina (Advisors: L. Judson Chandler, PhD and Heather Trantham-Davidson, PhD)
- 2010
- BS, Biological Sciences, University at Albany
Funding
Current
- NIH/NIAAA R01 (R01AA031477): Insula-BNST Circuit Regulation of AUD
- Whitehall Foundation Research Grant: Defining a unique BLA-Insula-BNST circuit in stress valence
Recent
- Wake Forest CTSI Translational Research Pilot Award: Cardiac Autonomic Function and Mid-Insula Circuit Dysregulation in Traumatic Stress
- Errett Fisher Foundation Discovery Award in Biomedical Research
- NIH/NIAAA K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award
- Brain & Behavior Research Foundation NARSAD Young Investigator Award
Selected Honors
- 2023, 2025
- PhD Mentor of the Year, Neuroscience Graduate Program, Wake Forest University
- 2023-2025
- Research Excellence Award, Wake Forest University School of Medicine
- 2024
- Early Career Investigator Showcase Award, NIDA-NIAAA Frontiers in Addiction Convention
- 2020
- Neuropsychopharmacology Editor’s Award for a Transformative Original Report (NEATOR)
- Vanderbilt University Postdoc of the Year, Honorable Mention
- 2018, 2019
- Junior Investigator Award, Research Society on Alcoholism