Rita Cervera Juanes is a Research Assistant Professor in the Primate Genetics Section, of the Division of Neuroscience at the ONPRC. She earned her Ph.D. in Biology from the Polytechnical University of Valencia, in Valencia Spain, in 2004. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego and a Research Associate at the Research Center Prince Felipe in Spain from 2004-2010. Her research was focused on the reprogramming mechanisms occurring during early embryonic development in mammals. In 2011 she was recruited at the Reproductive and Developmental Sciences Division and in 2012 she joined the Division of Neurosciences at the ONPRC to expand her epigenetic studies in the field of substance use disorders.

Her research interests focus on the study of the genetic and epigenetic contributions to diseases. Of particular interest for Dr. Cervera-Juanes is in understanding the role the genes and their regulatory mechanisms in establishing risk to develop certain disorders, such as substance use disorders. She is also interested in investigating the interactions between substances of abuse and the genes, and how those interactions modulate future behaviors. The identification of the specific molecular targets that respond to drug abuse will aid in the development of more specific pharmacological approaches for the treatment and prevention of these disorders. An additional area of interest for Dr. Cervera-Juanes is to decipher the mechanisms underlying the heritability of risk for substance use disorders.