An official website of the United States governmentShara Aduba, Ph.D.
Scientific Review Officer (Contractor), Office of Scientific Review
Shara Aduba, Ph.D., began supporting the Office of Scientific Review at the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) in July 2024 as a contractor scientific review officer. In this capacity, she assists with the management and coordination of the scientific review of applications submitted to NCCIH in response to various notices of funding opportunities (NOFOs).
Dr. Aduba received her Ph.D. in psychology from Virginia Tech, where she used psychophysiological methods to investigate complex relationships between the mind and the body, with a focus on autonomic stress physiology and affective processes. Specifically, she studied the relation of various dimensions of cardiac interoception (i.e. accuracy, sensitivity, and awareness) to cardiovascular activity in trait anxiety. She also examined and helped develop methodological controls for caffeine in cardiovascular reactivity research. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at George Washington University within the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology (in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences) where she used rodent models to study neurobehavioral and physiological mechanisms that contribute to chronic stress-related cardiovascular disease development. Specifically, she investigated the role of beta-adrenergic signaling and afferent feedback from the heart in fear memory processing. Both during and following her doctoral studies, Dr. Aduba was also involved in research with Dr. Lauren Atlas in the Section on Affective Neuroscience and Pain at NCCIH where she examined how expectations and learning influence pain and emotion.