Dr. Michael L. Oshinsky joined the NINDS in 2014 as the Program Director for Pain and Migraine and in 2022 was appointed Director of the NINDS Office of Preclinical Pain Research. As Director, Dr. Oshinsky is responsible for coordinating the research and administrative issues related to pain and headache research across NINDS’ Divisions of Neuroscience, Translational Research and Clinical Research. Dr. Oshinsky is also a co-Chair for the trans-NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative (HEAL). A major goal of the NIH HEAL initiative is to accelerate the discovery and pre-clinical development of pain treatments with little or no addiction liability. Dr. Oshinsky received a B.A. in Biology with a concentration in Neuroscience from Brandeis University, where he learned electrophysiology in the laboratory of Eve Marder, Ph.D. He earned a Ph.D. in Neurobiology & Behavior from Cornell University in the laboratory of Ronald R. Hoy studying neural circuits. As an NIH sponsored postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, he trained with Gary Aston-Jones, Ph.D. in neuropharmacology and neuromodulation. He was on the faculty in the Department of Neurology at Thomas Jefferson University (TJU) from 2001-2014. At TJU, he was the Director of Preclinical Research at the Jefferson Headache Center and led an NIH funded research program aimed at developing and characterizing animal models of headache. In 2011, Dr. Oshinsky was awarded the Harold G. Wolff Award for headache research.

Dr. Gregory Dussor is Professor and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Dallas. His work focuses on mechanisms of activation and sensitization of peripheral nociceptors innervating the cranial meninges with a goal of understanding how these neurons contribute to the pain phase of migraine attacks. Using several preclinical models, his group has identified and studied numerous targets within this afferent nociceptive system. More recently, his work has focused on mechanisms that may lead to the higher prevalence of migraine in females. He has published over 120 peer-reviewed research articles, he has served on the editorial boards of Pain, Pain Reports, Molecular Pain, the Journal of Pain, Headache, the Journal of Headache and Pain, and the Journal of Neuroscience, and he is on administrative committees for the US and International Associations for the Study of Pain (USASP and IASP) and the American Headache Society.

Dr. Pradhan is the Director for the Center of Clinical Pharmacology at Washington University School of Medicine and the University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis. Her lab investigates novel therapies for migraine, and she identified the delta opioid receptor as a promising target for this disorder. Ongoing studies in her lab are focused on the differential role of mu and delta opioid receptors in headache. Additionally, the lab focuses on identifying the molecular mechanisms that contribute to migraine chronicity, as well as overlapping mechanisms between migraine and neuropsychiatric conditions.