Dr. Nicole Schramm-Sapyta is an associate professor of the practice and Associate Director of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from N.C. State University in 1994 and her doctoral degree in Pharmacology from Vanderbilt University in 2000. Her course offerings at Duke include “Drugs and the Law,” “Reward and Addiction,” and “Biological Bases of Behavior.” She is the Faculty Advisor of the Wellness Living and Learning Community in Duke’s Wannamaker residence hall and co-leads a Bass Connections team on the subject of “Mental Health and the Justice System in Durham County”.
Her early career was dedicated to exploring the biological basis of drug addiction using rodent behavioral models, with a particular interest in adolescent vulnerability to addiction. This work led her to appreciate the importance of resilience and mental health in individuals and society as a whole. She began training as a facilitator in Writing for Resilience under Dr. John Evans in 2021.
