Dr. Benedict Kolber
- Associate Professor of Neuroscience
- Dean Bert Moore Distinguished Professor
The University of Texas at Dallas established an endowment in 2015 to honor the memory of Dr. Bert Moore, who served as dean of the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) for 26 years. Under Moore’s leadership, enrollment at the school increased by more than 500%; the number of faculty members more than doubled; and the number of degrees offered increased from five to 13. Two of the school’s graduate programs – audiology and speech-language pathology – are ranked among the nation’s best. The Dean Bert Moore Distinguished Professor endowed position supports an outstanding BBS faculty member whose research is in the field of psychology or neuroscience.
“It is an incredible honor to be representing Dean Bert Moore’s lasting and substantive legacy at UT Dallas. UT Dallas is the most exciting and dynamic university in the United States, and having the opportunity to contribute to the growth and development of education and research at the University is a privilege.”
Dr. Benedict Kolber studies the impact of stress adaptation on how people experience pain and common mechanisms behind pain and psychiatric illness. He investigates the role of emotional processing areas of the brain in both acute and chronic pain, with a focus on visceral and neuropathic pain. He tests options for novel analgesic and antidepressant molecules found in nature, with the goal of counteracting the opioid epidemic.
Using cutting-edge behavioral, pharmacological, electrophysiological and molecular techniques, Kolber seeks to understand the mechanisms of stress and pain. His published research covers topics such as understanding the links between management of pain and successful treatment of depression and anxiety disorders, developing a 3D computational model of neurons in the amygdala to find pharmacological pain targets, and nonpharmacological treatments for chronic pain.
Kolber has published more than 45 peer-reviewed articles focusing on a diverse set of areas, including brain areas involved in emotion and pain, mechanisms of bladder pain conditions, drug discovery for pain, nonpharmacologic therapy for chronic pain, and fear-learning. His research has appeared in Nature’s Scientific Reports, PAIN, The Journal of Urology, PLOS One, Biological Psychiatry, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and The Journal of Neuroscience.
He has received extensive funding from the National Institutes of Health, including from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and National Institute of Mental Health, in addition to support from several societies and foundations, including the International Association for the Study of Pain and the Scan Design Foundation.
Kolber joined UT Dallas in 2020, after moving from the University of Pittsburg School of Medicine and from Duquesne University, where he had served on the faculty for nine years. He was a postdoctoral research associate at Washington University in St. Louis, from which he earned a doctorate in neuroscience. He completed a Bachelor of Science in biology and psychology from the University of Dayton. .