D.P. Mohapatra, Ph.D.

Job Title
Program Director
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Photo of Dr. D.P. Mohapatra, Program Director, Pain Itch and Somatosensation
Division
Division of Neuroscience
Cluster, Section, or Program
Systems & Cognitive Neuroscience
Areas of Interest

Preclinical and clinical mechanisms with specific focus on translational pain research; Discovery of human pain genes, cells & functional phenotypes, and discovery-validation of targets for pain therapy & management; Integrated clinical and basic team-based research in pain; Understanding individual differences in human pain and comorbidities; Basic, translational and clinical research on neurobiology of itch; Peripheral mechanisms of somatosensation; Glia/Microglia biology and neuroimmune interactions.

Contact
Contact Email
Contact Number

Dr. D.P. Mohapatra joined NINDS in 2019 as a Program Director in Systems and Cognitive Neuroscience, and the NIH HEAL Initiative. He oversee portfolios that include preclinical and clinical mechanisms at both peripheral and central neuraxis of pain, with specific focus on translational pain research in pain conditions that are relevant to NINDS mission; NIH HEAL Initiative programs on PRECISION Human Pain Network, Integrated clinical and basic team-based research in pain, and Understanding individual differences in human pain and comorbidities; Peripheral and central neurobiological mechanisms of itch; Peripheral mechanisms of somatosensation; Glia/Microglia biology and neuroimmune interactions. 

Prior to joining NINDS, Dr. Mohapatra was a tenured Associate Professor of Anesthesiology in Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and prior to that he was a tenured Associate Professor of Pharmacology at The University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. During his academic career, he established multiple NIH- and DoD-funded research programs on peripheral mechanisms and models of inflammatory, cancer and neuropathic pain, as well as on translational pain research. His research utilized multidisciplinary approach, and simultaneous assessment of transcriptomic, molecular, biophysical, cellular and histological characterization of rodent and human sensory neurons and skin/tissue biopsies under physiological and painful conditions. He also established novel mouse models of neuropathic and cancer pain pathologies, and new/modified voluntary pain-associated behavioral outcome measures in mice, as well as their pharmacological validations.

Dr. Mohapatra mentored several undergraduate & graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows, many of whom currently hold faculty positions at reputed academic institutions. During his academic career as a faculty, he extensively taught different neuroscience and pharmacology-related topics to undergraduate, graduate and medical students. His post-doctoral training at the University of California at Davis focused on sub-cellular trafficking/localization and functions of Kv channels in mammalian brain neurons, and their contribution to neuroprotection in epileptic seizures and stroke injury conditions. He earned his Doctorate in Human Biology from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Faculty of Medicine (Germany), where his studies focused on understanding how modifications in TRPV1 and Nav channel functions contribute to inflammatory pain signal transduction.