Mary Kritzer

Mary Kritzer is a SUNY Distinguished Service Professor at Stony Brook University, holding positions in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior (College of Arts and Sciences) and the Renaissance School of Medicine. She also serves as a Research Scientist at The Matt and Debra Cody Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, and affiliate faculty in the Department of Psychology. Her research focuses on the neurobiology of association cortices, exploring how sex differences and gonadal hormones influence cognitive functions and their dysfunction in disorders like schizophrenia and autism.

Education: B.S. in Neuroscience (University of Rochester, 1983), M.Phil. (Yale University, 1986), Ph.D. in Neuroanatomy (Yale University, 1989). Postdoctoral training included NIH-funded work at the University of Oxford and Yale University’s Neurobiology Section. She joined Stony Brook in 1993, progressing from Assistant to Full Professor by 2009.

Research Interests: Investigating hormonal modulation of cortical functions across molecular-behavioral levels, with emphasis on sex differences in cognitive and affective processing. Her lab studies dopamine systems, glutamate receptor dynamics, and neurobiological mechanisms underlying mental illnesses.

Awards: 2007 Aesculapius Award (Stony Brook University School of Medicine).

Roles: Member of the Research Board of Directors at the Cody Center for Autism. Active in interdisciplinary collaborations linking neurobiology to developmental disabilities research. Her lab’s work bridges basic neuroscience and clinical insights into psychiatric disorders.