For over 25 years Richard Melloni’s academic efforts had been split between teaching in Behavioral Neuroscience and Psychology and leading an actively-funded research program centered on two central themes that complemented one another by focusing on basic and clinical research on the behavioral neurobiology of aggression.
Dr. Melloni’s basic science research focused on identifying and characterizing the strengths of the different neurochemical systems and neural circuits that modulated aggressive behavior and anxiety and determine how pharmacologic influences and social stress and alter the development — thus the strength — of these neural units, effectively altering aggression, anxiety and the relationship between these two behaviors.
His clinical research focused on classifying maladaptive aggressive phenotypes in youth, and identifying novel biological markers and complex social, environmental and psychiatric correlates of maladaptive aggression in this same population.
Since 2021, Dr. Melloni has focused academic efforts on teaching in Behavioral Neuroscience and Psychology. He teaches courses in Clinical Neuroanatomy, Biological Psychology, and Neuropsychopharmacology, and Seminar In Biological Psychology.