Dr. Albert obtained his B.Sc. in Physiology/Biochemistry from McGill University, Montreal (1980) and his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Harvard University, Boston (1985) under Dr. Armen H. Tashjian, Jr. on Stimulus-secretion coupling in rat pituitary cells. He did post-doctoral studies with Drs. Herbert and Olivier Civelli on molecular cloning of serotonin and dopamine receptor genes. He became Assistant Professor, then tenured Associate Professor in the Dept. of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, McGill University (1989-95), and then moved to Ottawa as CIHR/Novartis Michael Smith Chair in Neuroscience, University of Ottawa. He is currently Full Professor of Medicine and Senior Scientist and the Associate Director of Neuroscience at OHRI.
Dr. Albert’s lab has been continuously funded since 1989. He has supervised and graduated 26 M.Sc., 16 Ph.D., 25 Post-doctoral trainees, most of whom have gone on to successful careers in academia as reserchers, MDs, or in industry and government. He has received several awards for mentoring and research accomplishments, published over 150 papers or book chapters, and presented his research at 170 meetings and centres throughout the world.
Professor Albert is working to understand the mechanisms that underlie mental illness including anxiety, depression and post-stroke depression, and what determines whether patients will respond to antidepressants. Since antidepressants (e.g., serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)) are only effective in 30% of depressed patients and require over three weeks, better ways of predicting response or alternative treatments are needed. To address these questions, Dr. Albert examines genetic and epigenetic regulators of the serotonin system and their effects on behavior and antidepressant response in transgenic, knockout, optogenetic, stress, and injury mouse models of mental illness and in human depressed patients.