Natalia Pessoa Rocha, PharmD, MSc, PhD

Biography

Dr. Rocha is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology at McGovern Medical School, UTHealth Houston. She received a Pharm.D. degree in 2008, an M.S. in Neuroscience in 2011, and a Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology in 2014 from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. Her experience in basic and translational neuroscience, particularly in the field of neuroimmunology, led her to engage in several studies investigating the immunological mechanisms underlying the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric disorders, particularly neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s disease (HD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Dr. Rocha joined UTHealth Houston in January 2016 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology in August 2019, where she currently serves as Director of Huntington’s Disease Research. Since then, she has focused her research on immune and inflammatory parameters associated with HD and other neurodegenerative disorders. Her current research also investigates late-life psychiatric syndromes as potential prodromal manifestations of AD and the clinical spectrum of HD and PD, including the identification of biomarkers and predictors of neuropsychiatric symptoms and disease onset/progression. Her work incorporates clinical, fluid biomarker, and neuroimaging techniques to better understand the neuropsychiatric and cognitive manifestations of neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr. Rocha has received numerous awards and published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, cited more than 6,000 times (h-index = 45; Google Scholar).