Dr. Rood received his B.S. from Bates College in Lewiston, ME. During his thesis research on the long-term effects of early life stress, Dr. Rood developed an interest in how social and environmental stress can impact brain circuits and behavior. Dr. Rood then joined the Neuroscience and Behavior program at the University of Massachusetts where he worked with Dr. Geert de Vries, an expert on sex differences in the vasopressin system. During the course of his dissertation, Dr. Rood identified the different innervation targets of the three primary vasopressin systems in the mouse brain: extended amygdala, suprachiasmatic nucleus, and hypothalamic paraventricular/supraoptic nuclei systems. To test hypotheses generated from neuroanatomical data, Dr. Rood set out to learn patch clamp electrophysiology. After obtaining his Ph.D. in 2010, he joined the lab of Dr. Sheryl Beck, an expert in serotonin neuron electrophysiology, at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia as a post-doctoral researcher. Dr. Rood worked to identify developmental characteristics of serotonin neurons and to identify the impact of vasopressin on serotonin neurons. With a solid background in serotonin neuron electrophysiology, Dr. Rood then joined the lab of Dr. Susan Dymecki at Harvard Medical School. In Dr. Dymecki's lab, he worked on multiple projects providing important electrophysiological data in projects aimed at understanding the functional role of genetically delineated serotonin neuron subtypes, including those related to aggression. Dr. Rood started his own lab at Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine in the summer of 2018. His lab brings together methods from his broad neuroscience training to examine the structure and function of brain circuits underlying social behavior. Current work focuses on the downstream targets of the extended amygdala vasopressin system, which is thought to be involved in prosocial behavior.