Jane Foster

Jane A. Foster, PhD Dr. Foster is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, and the Center for Depression Research and Clinical Care at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

As a neuroscientist and a leading expert on the microbiome, Dr. Foster recently joined UT Southwester Medical Center (May 2022) to lead the effort to connect the dots between a person’s 30 trillion gut microbes and their propensity for mental illness. By combining basic science research with clinical collaboration in psychiatry, psychology, and gastroenterology, Dr. Foster’s research takes a ‘bench to bedside’ and back again approach to studying microbiota-brain and immune-brain systems. This collaborative approach and the ability to independently conceptualize cutting-edge neurobiological research in both normal states and psychiatric disorders has resulted in the development of an internationally recognized research program. The focus of ongoing research is the development of analytical methods to integrate microbiome and immune data with neuroimaging, behavioral, and clinical data sets in order to better understand the individual nature of microbiome-host interactions in health and disease.