Ethel du Pont Warren Fellowship Fund

Benefactor Report

March 2026

March 5, 2026

Dear Mr. LastName,

I’m pleased to share an update on the Ethel du Pont Warren Fund. In 2025, the Fund supported five du Pont Warren Fellows.

In this report, we profile each Fellow, highlighting biographical background and summaries of the research projects their fellowship awards support. Collectively, this year’s Fellows pursue groundbreaking research in bipolar disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, post-traumatic stress, and culturally specific approaches to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Their projects span the full breadth of the psychiatric field, from compassionate, patient-centered clinical care to cutting-edge science informed by ophthalmology and neuroscience.

I hope you enjoy learning about the latest advances your mother’s vision and generosity continue to inspire.

Sincerely,

Dr. Adamowicz is a research-oriented, board-certified psychiatrist with 18 years of research experience in neuropsychiatric disorders. His PhD work, under the mentorship of Dr. Fred Gage at the Salk Institute, focused on dementia with Lewy bodies using postmortem brain samples and cell-culture methods. He completed his MD studies and a research-track residency in psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, where he developed a clinical interest in severe mental illness and the behavioral and psychological manifestations of neurodegenerative disorders.

During his residency, he worked with Drs. Ellen Lee and Dilip Jeste, both geriatric psychiatrists with expertise in serious mental illnesses, to examine inflammatory mechanisms among people aging with schizophrenia. The team identified an inflammatory profile that reflects cognitive functioning (executive functioning and processing speed) using a broad array of cytokines and chemokines. Their data-driven approach allowed them to examine the inflammatory milieu, and they found that systemic inflammation at baseline did not predict longitudinal declines in executive functioning nearly five years later.

He completed a clinical fellowship in geriatric psychiatry through the Mass General Brigham program and continues his research in neuroinflammation, developing his bioinformatics skills with Dr. Hyun-Sik Yang at Brigham and Women's Hospital, studying single-cell gene expression of peripheral blood mononuclear cells in participants from the Harvard Aging Brain Study. Their work uncovers cell-specific transcriptional immune pathways that mediate the link between immune-system alterations and Alzheimer’s disease pathology.

Dr. Adamowicz’s goal is to build an independent research program that further elucidates the molecular underpinnings of neuropsychiatric symptoms in dementia, with a focus on the immune system’s role. His combined clinical and research training in neuropsychiatric disorders positions him to investigate novel biological mechanisms that could lead to new treatment approaches for brain disorders. He recently accepted an offer to stay on as an associate psychiatrist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital to continue this work.

In the coming year, Dr. Adamowicz will apply for a transition-to-independence award and foundation grants to fund dedicated research time that will generate pilot data in support of this goal. As he advances as a physician–scientist with a pronounced interest in the intersection of the immune system and dementia, he will foster new cross-disciplinary collaborations to help answer complex questions, as he has done throughout his career.

Dr. Babapoor-Farrokhran became interested in psychiatry during his early years of medical school at Tehran University, which led him to the laboratory of Dr. Mohammad Reza Zarrindast, known in Iran as the “Dopamine Man.” To further his basic scientific knowledge of the brain, Dr. Babapoor-Farrokhran subsequently entered the lab of Dr. Stefan Everling’s at Western University in London, Ontario, to pursue a PhD in neuroscience. His PhD project focused on cognitive control and brain circuits; he investigated how neurons across different brain areas communicate by synchronizing their oscillatory activity. He won an Ontario Graduate Scholarship and published part of the work in Nature Communications. Most of the projects in Dr. Everling’s lab are clinically oriented, which is why Dr. Babapoor-Farrokhran says that “the most important lesson I learned during my PhD career was how to be an excellent clinician–scientist.”

In pursuit of his dream of becoming a great clinician–scientist, Dr. Babapoor-Farrokhran entered the psychiatry residency program at Western University. He won the 2019 Dr. David Harris Award in geriatric psychiatry during his residency training. After finishing his residency, he received an Interventional Neuropsychiatry & Neuromodulation Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School, following his passion for neuro-stimulation and electrophysiology, his interest in the convergence of research and clinical skills, and his belief that the future of psychiatry is in more targeted and individualized approaches. The fellowship included training in the assessment and delivery of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Dr. Babapoor-Farrokhran also consulted with and treated patients in the transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) clinic, performed motor threshold measurements, assessed ketamine treatments, and administered ketamine.

After finishing his fellowship training, MGH offered him a position as an attending psychiatrist and researcher. He practices in the TMS, ECT, and ketamine clinics and provides coverage in the inpatient unit and the emergency psychiatry service at MGH. He also continues his research work, spearheading a closed-loop transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) project. 

Dr. Koire found her path during her third year of medical school, rotating in an outpatient reproductive psychiatry clinic at Texas Children’s Hospital. Through her own experiences in the community and her time seeing new evaluations in the clinic, she became aware of how often health care providers recommended treatment plans to perinatal women that were not evidence-based and had serious repercussions for the patients’ mental health by the time they arrived in the specialty clinic. She has been driven ever since to become a reproductive psychiatrist who makes a difference both in the clinic and beyond, through research, education, and advocacy for perinatal mental health.

After completing both her MD and PhD at Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Koire joined Brigham and Women’s Hospital as a research-track resident in psychiatry in June 2020; she later served as Academic Chief Resident while concentrating in women’s mental health. She subsequently worked for four years in the Developmental Risk and Cultural Resilience Laboratory under Dr. Cindy Liu, studying the psychological responses and mental health outcomes of pregnant women during the COVID pandemic, which included evaluating topics related to perinatal stress and trauma.

She also worked in the Women’s Hormones and Aging Research Program (WHARP), collaborating with Dr. Hadine Joffe on studies of hormonal transitions in mood and cognition in women, and later published a first-author review on this topic in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry. She now conducts quality-improvement research for the psychiatry residency program’s new Preconception Psychiatric Consultation Resident Clinic and is the principal investigator on a survey study evaluating women’s mental health training needs from the trainee perspective. 

Her long-term goal is to have a career in academic psychiatry, practicing and teaching reproductive psychiatry, and conducting research on sex- and gender-specific considerations in psychiatric treatment. She hopes to gain a better understanding of the role of the neuroendocrine system in stress-related psychiatric disorders across the reproductive lifespan. She is particularly interested in conducting research that considers both biological and psychosocial factors in the perinatal population, enabling physicians to offer truly personalized, evidence-based treatment recommendations. 

Dr. Raza is a psychiatrist, scientist, and educator working at the intersection of ophthalmology, neurology, and psychiatry. He aims to define the nascent field that unites these disciplines by blending research, education, clinical innovation, and his passion for technology.

After discovering the joys of scientific inquiry as an undergraduate, he took time to immerse himself in research. At the time, an imaging technology called optical coherence tomography—a non-invasive technique using light waves that yields low-depth, high-resolution images, most commonly of the human retina—was advancing rapidly in sophistication and capability. Given the pace of innovation in the research lab and the unique opportunity there, he deferred his acceptance into Harvard Medical School for three years to complete his PhD at Columbia. His thesis yielded not only a meaningful body of work with over 30 peer-reviewed publications, including four first-author investigative manuscripts in high-impact journals within the field, but also direct translational impact; the methods Dr. Raza developed improved the software of clinically approved medical devices from multiple manufacturers, making more reliable glaucoma detection and longitudinal monitoring of progression possible, with direct implications for assessment of treatment response.

When Dr. Raza began the MD program at Harvard, he found that his experience in neurology and ophthalmology now led him toward psychiatry—the profound suffering of patients, the clinical nuance of the field, and the vast scientific uncertainty ripe for innovation. During residency, he pursued projects involving electronic medical records data and computer programming.

Throughout his career, Dr. Raza has leveraged his passion for novel technologies not only for research but also for education. During his PhD studies, he created an engaging introductory neuroscience curriculum for underprivileged high school students in New York City. In medical school, he designed and developed a prototype database to facilitate trainee access to reduced-fee treatment; subsequently, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he led a project to create an internal portal, including implementation of an underlying semi-automated database, both of which served as the foundation for Harvard Medical School offerings to facilitate student involvement with community volunteer and research efforts related to the pandemic.

Dr. Zambrano is a fourth-year psychiatry resident in the MGH/McLean Adult Psychiatry Residency Training Program. Her long-term goal is to become an independent investigator in intervention development and the implementation of psychedelic-assisted therapies (PAT) for marginalized populations, particularly Latinx immigrants. She hopes that the du Pont Warren Fellowship will lead to an NIH K23 Career Development Award.

Originally from Colombia, she graduated from medical school at the University of the Andes in Bogotá before coming to Boston to complete a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Cardiac Psychiatry Research Program at MGH, where she focused on developing psychiatric interventions for medically ill populations. She also completed a master’s in public health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she concentrated on policy and implementation science and adapted mental health interventions for Latinx immigrants. During residency, she joined the Physician Scientist Training Program in Psychiatry, completed numerous PAT training programs, and secured funding to develop her proposed intervention.

Despite rapidly growing interest in PAT, researchers and clinicians have made few efforts to extend PAT treatment to traditionally marginalized and vulnerable populations. If practitioners do not apply cultural humility and adequate adaptation frameworks, the implementation of these therapies may unintentionally widen the equity treatment gap between white Americans and racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic minorities. Despite significant mental health burdens, Latinx Americans use mental health and primary care services at a rate far lower than their white counterparts. Various structural and systemic barriers—cultural stigmas, limited access to culturally competent care, language discordance, and financial hurdles—contribute to these disparities. Dr. Zambrano aims to develop a ketamine-assisted group therapy intervention for Spanish-speaking adults with depression. A proof-of-concept pilot study and qualitative work will inform the development of larger randomized trials and the implementation strategies for PAT among marginalized groups.

Dr. Zambrano hopes to combine her experience in PAT implementation science with her expertise in Hispanic psychiatry to bridge gaps in care. “The du Pont Warren Fellowship,” she says, “represents a critical step toward achieving that goal.” The data from her project will result in three first-author manuscripts and presentations at two or more national conferences. It will also support her application for an NIH K23 Career Development Award, which will fund a larger trial.