Research Assistant Professor
Stanley Foundation
Bethesda, Maryland

Dr. Maree Webster received her Ph.D. in neuroanatomy from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia in 1985. She completed her postdoctoral training in the Laboratory of Neuropsychology at NIMH and was a visiting scientist there until 1995. Dr. Webster is currently a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute Brain Collection and Laboratory of Brain Research. The laboratory collects, stores, and processes postmortem brain samples from individuals with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and non-psychotic depression and distributes the samples to research laboratories around the world. Dr. Webster’s research projects investigate the neuropathology of severe mental illness. In addition to undertaking studies designed to replicate and verify important novel results that are submitted on the samples distributed from the Brain Collection, Dr Webster undertakes studies that focus on the molecular mechanisms controlling normal brain development, and the possibility that these mechanisms may be disrupted in severe mental illness. These studies are designed to detect abnormalities in the expression and regulation of neurotrophic and transcription factors in both neurons and glia of subjects with severe mental illness. She also investigates the expression of various neurotrophins, transcription factors, hormones and receptors during the development of the normal human and nonhuman primate brain to better understand the periods when the developing brain is most vulnerable to environmental stimuli, such as viruses, that could impact the developing system and lead to the subtle neural changes that result in severe mental illness.