Aging & Gerontology

Biography

José V. Pardo received in 1975 his Bachelor of Science degree majoring in physics and mathematics at the University of Miami, Miami, FL. He became a Medical Scientist Trainee (MSTP) at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore, MD). His graduate training was in the Biochemistry, Cellular, and Molecular Biology Program (BCMB) under the mentorship of Susan W. Craig, Ph.D. His M.D./Ph.D. was awarded in 1983 after discovering a novel organelle in the muscle cell, the costamere. He completed a Medical Internship at Duke University Hospital, Durham, NC, in 1984. Subsequently, he enrolled in a Psychiatry Residency at the Barnes Hospital, St. Louis, MO. During the residency and fellowship he worked in the Department of Radiation Sciences where PET was invented in the 1970s-80s by Michele Ter-Pogossian, Ph.D. Dr. Pardo’s immediate research mentors were Marcus A. Raichle, M.D., and Michael I. Posner, Ph.D. He trained to use neuroimaging to study cognitive neuroscience between 1986-1990. His major contribution during the fellowship was finding the anterior cingulate cortex was the principal locus of the Stroop Color/Word Test, a classical probe of attentional processing.

He joined the faculty at Washington University, St. Louis, MO, as Assistant Professor. In 1991 he moved to the Minneapolis VA Medical Center to lead the psychiatric neuroimaging effort and was promoted to Professor of Psychiatry in in 2004 at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. Dr. Pardo has mentored numerous students, fellows, and junior faculty, and has been continuously funded by federal and private foundations. He has reviewed grant applications as a Standing Member of the APDA Study Section and is a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. His current research interest focuses on elucidating the role of the anterior cingulate cortex in normal aging.