Stacy Markison received undergraduate and masters' degrees in Psychology from San Diego State University, where she studied the effects of aging on changes in olfactory function in humans, and her PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience from the University of Florida in Gainesville, where she studied the role of the gustatory system in recovery from specific nutrient deficiency with Alan Spector. She completed postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania with Harvey Grill and Joel Kaplan. As a postdoctoral fellow, she used behavioral models to understand the neural control of ingestion and body weight regulation. Dr. Markison has continued to pursue her interest in behavioral models of central nervous system diseases at Neurocrine Biosciences, a biopharmaceutical company in San Diego. Her group has developed and validated efficacy models in several target areas including obesity, cachexia, anxiety, depression and neurodegeneration. Most recently, she has served as the team leader for the preclinical proof of concept studies on the A2A Antagonist Program for Parkinson’s disease.