Dr. Christian Bravo-Rivera is a new Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Anatomy & Neurobiology at the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine. He received his bachelor’s degree in General Sciences from the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras. He obtained his PhD in Anatomy and Neurobiology in the University of Puerto Rico Medical School, under the mentorship of Dr. Gregory J. Quirk. For his thesis, he developed a novel avoidance behavioral paradigm, which he combined with electrophysiology and pharmacology methods to characterize brain structures mediating fear and avoidance. His thesis work was supported by an NIMH R36 Dissertation Award. In January 2016 he joined the Bo Li's laboratory at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow, where he received an NIMH NRSA F32 Fellowship to investigate how ventral pallidal projections to the lateral habenula control behavioral motivation. He was later awarded a K99/R00 BRAIN Initiative Award to support his current research about characterizing ventropallido-habenula circuits governing reward approach and punishment avoidance conflict.