J. Josh Lawrence

J. Josh Lawrence is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Neuroscience at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC), affiliated with the Garrison Institute on Aging, Center of Excellence for Translational Neuroscience and Therapeutics, and Center for Excellence in Integrated Health.

He earned his B.S. from Allegheny College in 1992 and Ph.D. from the Neuroscience Training Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1999, with postdoctoral training at NIH focusing on hippocampal circuits. Prior to TTUHSC, he served as an NIH/NINDS-funded Assistant Professor at the University of Montana studying medial septum-diagonal band of Broca (MS-DBB) impacts on hippocampal cell types.

His research centers on Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis in the hippocampus, currently investigating vitamin A status relationships through two active NIH/NIA R01 grants. He maintains cross-institutional collaborations across TTU Engineering, Biology, Nutritional Sciences, and Biotechnology and Genomics departments, with historical focus on learning/memory operations and synaptic physiology in mammalian hippocampus.

As an educator, he previously taught undergraduate Neuroscience and currently directs a graduate Translational Neuroscience and Pharmacology course. He serves as President of the West Texas Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience and actively promotes undergraduate research via TTUHSC Summer Accelerated Biomedical Research Program, TTU Undergraduate Research Scholars, and STEM CORE outreach initiatives.