Our Mentors
Kristin Schreiber, MD
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Dr. Kristin Schreiber is a Neuroscientist and Clinical Regional Anesthesiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. As a translational physician scientist, she works clinically in the OR taking care of patients in the perioperative period, and also leads studies centered around the prediction and prevention of Chronic Postsurgical Pain (CPSP). Her training includes an MD/PhD in Neuroscience and Pain Pharmacology, postgraduate residency in Anesthesia and fellowship training in Regional Anesthesia, as well as further training in Biostatistics and Clinical Research from Harvard School of Public Health. Her research program has focused on the development of chronic pain after surgical injury. She integrates accurate bedside measurement of psychosocial and psychophysical phenotype in preoperative patients to prospectively identify individuals at highest risk of pain persistence, so that the processes underlying this propensity may be averted with a variety of non-opioid pharmacologic tools and behavioral interventions adapted to the perioperative period, including regional anesthesia, ketamine, yoga-based exercise, distraction, music, CBT, and open-label placebo. In addition to her research activities in patients presenting for surgery, she studies the variability in pain processing pathways among patients and participants in the quantitative sensory testing lab, investigating how these may be modulated with various interventions. She serves as the Vice Chair of Faculty Development in the Department of Anesthesiology, an editor at Anesthesiology, and mentors undergraduates, residents, postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty is their own research.
Rob Edwards
Pronouns: he/him/his
Rob Edwards co-directs the MGB IMPACT program with Kristin Schreiber. He is an Associate Professor and a licensed clinical psychologist in the Pain Management Center in the Department of Anesthesiology at Brigham & Women’s Hospital / MGB. Dr. Edwards works with an interdisciplinary group of pain researchers to study biobehavioral aspects of acute and chronic pain. His group studies individual differences in pain responses, the neurobiological mechanisms by which psychosocial processes shape those individual differences, and the harnessing of a variety of pain mechanisms in order to personalize and optimize interventions for individual patients with chronic pain. He has expertise in quantitative sensory testing, psychosocial assessment and phenotyping of patients with chronic pain, biomarker- and mechanism-focused interventional studies, and the implementation of non-pharmacologic treatments for chronic pain.
Mohammed Issa
Pronouns: he/him/his
Dr. Issa serves as Medical Director of the Pain Management Center at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital. Dr. Issa splits his time at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital between Brigham and Women’s Comprehensive Spine Center and the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine. He studied medicine at the University of Alexandria and psychiatry at West Virginia University School of Medicine where he spent a year as Chief Resident in the Department of Psychiatry. He has also completed fellowships in Addiction Psychiatry (Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine), Pain (Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School) and Forensic Psychiatry (Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry, West Virginia University School of Medicine). Dr. Issa is board certified in Psychiatry, Addiction Medicine and Pain Medicine.
Jeffrey Katz, MD, MS
Pronouns: he/him/his
Jeffrey N. Katz, MD, MS graduated from Princeton University in 1980, attended Yale Medical School, and completed a medical internship and residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital and a Rheumatology fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He received a Master’s Degree in 1990 at Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Katz is currently Professor of Medicine and Orthopaedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health.
Dr. Katz has focused his research on the evaluation and outcomes of musculoskeletal disorders including carpal tunnel syndrome, lumbar spinal stenosis and osteoarthritis and lower extremity joint replacement. He has developed measures of functional status and symptom severity for several conditions including carpal tunnel syndrome and lumbar spinal stenosis. He has led studies documenting the influence of surgeon and hospital volume on outcomes of total joint replacement. He is Principal Investigator of two NIH funded multicenter clinical trials: the MeTeOR Trial of surgical vs. rehabilitative approaches to the problem of meniscal tear in the setting of osteoarthritis, and the TeMPO Trial of four different nonoperative approaches to meniscal tear in the setting of knee osteoarthritis.
Dr. Katz is Clinical Director of the Orthopaedic and Arthritis Center for Outcomes Research in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is co-PI of a NIAMS funded T32 clinical research training program. He is Deputy Editor for Methodology of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery and Associate Editor of Osteoarthritis and Cartilage Open. Dr. Katz received the A Clifford Barger Mentoring Award from Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Katz lives in Brookline, MA with his wife Susan Zeiger, PhD, a 20th Century American historian.
Elizabeth Klerman
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Dr. Beth Klerman is a Professor of Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), and Harvard Medical School (HMS) whose efforts are concentrated in clinical and biomathematical research, and teaching. My areas of research are (i) the application of circadian and sleep research principles to normal and pathophysiologic states and (ii) mathematical analysis and modeling of human circadian, sleep, and neurobehavioral mood and performance rhythms. She has many collaborative projects applying the principles of circadian rhythms and sleep research to the study of human physiology and pathophysiology, including in Ob/Gyn, dermatology, neurology, psychiatry (including substance abuse), women’s health, and pediatrics. Clinically related research projects have included studies of the effects of time of day on antibody response to a COVID-19 vaccine (J Biol Rhythms), the effects of light on non-motor symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease (JAMA Neurology), the effects of light and melatonin concentrations on uterine contractions in late-term pregnant women (J Pineal Research), and relationships between timing of eating and lean/non-lean body composition and food choice in college students (Am J Clin Nutr). Other research projects have focused on the physiology underlying sleep and circadian rhythms in blind people, the impact of light and darkness on circadian rhythms, changes in sleep and performance in healthy aging, and the effects of chronic sleep restriction on neurobehavioral performance and alertness. She founded the Outpatient Sleep, Circadian and Activity Rhythms (OSCAR) Core at Mass General Brigham, which provides the scientific expertise and technical support to facilitate the rigorous collection, processing, and analysis of outpatient sleep, actigraphy, and circadian rhythms data for human studies. She is also Director of the Analytic and Modeling Unit (AMU) within the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders. She has enjoyed continuous external funding since 1995, including a K24 mentoring grant, with her mentees going on to successful, funded careers internationally.
Samantha Meints, MD
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Dr. Samantha Meints is a pain psychologist in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. Her program of research aims to examine biobehavioral and psychosocial pain mechanisms and implement nonpharmacologic interventions for the prevention and treatment of chronic pain. In one line of research, she explores psychosocial factors that influence individual differences in the experience of , including response to pain treatment, with a focus on pain-related coping, stigma, and nociceptive sensitivity. In another line, she is focused on ed the development, refinement, and implementation nonpharmacologic interventions for the prevention and treatment of chronic pain. She is particularly interested in identifying individuals at highest risk for chronic pain and long-term opioid use so that they may be targeted for preventative nonpharmacologic intervention. Dr. Meints is dedicated to the mentorship and training of clinical researchers, increasing accessibility of pain research especially for people from traditionally underserved backgrounds, and multidisciplinary collaboration.
Vitaly Napadow
Pronouns: he/him/his
Vitaly Napadow is Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, as well as Anesthesiology, at Harvard Medical School. He is also the Director of the Schoen and Adams Discovery Center for Chronic Pain Recovery at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and the Center for Integrative Pain Neuroimaging (CiPNI) at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. He has been a pain neuroimaging researcher for more than 20 years. Somatosensory, cognitive, and affective factors all influence the malleable experience of chronic pain, and Dr. Napadow’s Lab has applied human functional and structural neuroimaging to localize and suggest mechanisms by which different brain circuitries modulate pain perception. Dr. Napadow’s neuroimaging research also aims to better understand how non-pharmacological therapies, from acupuncture and transcutaneous neuromodulation to cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness meditation training, ameliorate aversive perceptual states such as pain. Dr. Napadow has more than 230 publications in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals, is past-President of the Society for Acupuncture Research, and served on the board of the US Association for the Study of Pain (USASP) and numerous conference, journal, and NIH review panels.
Laura Payne, PhD
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Laura A. Payne, PhD is a clinical psychologist and the Director of the Clinical and Translational Pain Research Lab at McLean Hospital and Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School. She received her PhD in 2007 from Boston University and then completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA where her research focused on children and young adults with chronic pain. Dr. Payne has been awarded numerous NIH grants, including a postdoctoral NRSA and a K23 grant to examine central sensitization mechanisms in adolescent girls and young adult women with menstrual pain. Dr. Payne’s current research focuses on identifying neurobiological, behavioral, and psychological biomarkers related to the transition to chronic pain, particularly in individuals with menstrual pain, and she currently has a longitudinal NICHD-funded R01 study using quantitative sensory testing and fMRI to better understand the trajectory of menstrual pain and widespread pain in adolescents with primary dysmenorrhea (menstrual pain without an identified cause) over 2 years. Dr. Payne also has a study funded by the Department of Defense to explore the relationship of central sensitization of pain and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) response in adult women with menstrual pain. Her other work includes examining the role of the menstrual cycle in pain and psychiatric conditions, identifying salivary inflammatory markers associated with pain responses, and she was one of five NIH awardees funded to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 vaccine on menstruation in adolescent girls. Clinically, Dr. Payne provides outpatient pain-focused psychological care at McLean Hospital to women with all types of chronic pain conditions, with a special focus on pelvic and gynecologic pain.
Aderonke Pederson, MD
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Aderonke Pederson, MD, is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Psychiatrist in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her program of research is focused on developing and testing interventions that reduce health care disparities for underserved and vulnerable populations. She is the director of recruitment for EPPIC-Net (Early Phase Pain Investigation Clinical Network) and the director of research equity for the MGH CTNI (Clinical Trials Network and Institute). She focuses on research engagement, recruitment, and retention and identifying mechanisms to increase research engagement for underserved populations including reducing disparities in mental illness, pain medicine and HIV. Dr. Pederson has longstanding expertise in initiating and fostering community-led research partnerships. Dr. Pederson has developed mechanistic targets in the area of stigma about mental illness among Black people, with the goal to increase their engagement in mental health services, and to improve mental health outcomes for all patients with mental illness. She lectures on ongoing disparities in pain management and assessment among clinicians. She has made seminal contributions in the areas of advancing health equity and development of disparity-reduction strategies, with numerous first/senior-authored publications addressing health disparities in medicine. Dr. Pederson has received 5 federal grants to perform various aspects of clinical research in the area of mental illness stigma among Black people, laying a strong foundation for both understanding and developing effective intervention interventions in more diverse populations She currently serves as the Director of Research Equity for the Clinical Trials Network and Institution. As a mentor for the IMPACT program, Dr. Pederson’s rich background and pragmatic expertise in advancing health equity and measuring the effects of social determinants of health on pain will serve trainees well, giving them this crucial perspective.
Pamela Rist
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Dr. Pamela Rist’s research interests are focused on the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease (particularly stroke) and neurologic disease (especially those with a vascular component), with the goal of identifying ways to reduce the morbidity burden associated with stroke, migraine, and cognitive decline. Her research aims to understand the underlying biology behind cardiovascular and neurologic disease, and reduce the morbidity from these diseases. Her research has focused on four main areas: (1) the functional consequences of migraine, (2) novel treatments for migraine, (3) risk factors for functional outcomes from stroke and (4) risk factors for overall cerebrovascular disease burden in the brains of ischemic stroke patients. In addition to her research activities, I am actively involved in teaching activities at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School.
Peter Wayne, PhD
Pronouns: he/him/his
Peter Wayne, PhD, is a researcher, practitioner, and instructor of mind-body and integrative therapies. He is the Bernard Osher Associate Professor of Medicine in the Field of Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies, Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Director for the Osher Center for Integrative Health, jointly based HMS and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The primary focus of Dr. Wayne’s research is evaluating how complementary and integrative therapies clinically impact aging and chronic health conditions, including pain, and understanding the physiological and psychological mechanisms underlying observed therapeutic effects. He has served as a principal or co-investigator on more than 35 NIH-funded studies, authored more than 200 peer-reviewed articles, and is deeply committed to mentoring. Peter also has more than 40 years of training experience in Tai Chi and Qigong and is an internationally recognized teacher of these practices.
