Dr. Daws has a long-standing interest in molecular mechanisms of neuropsychiatric disorders that began during her graduate work at Vanderbilt University under the mentorship of Dr. Christine Konradi.  During this time, Dr. Daws determined that dopamine receptors are functionally active very early in the brain and that adolescent cocaine exposure has long-lasting effects on anxiety-related behavior and gene expression. In 2011, she joined the lab of Dr. Yasmin Hurd at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine where she studied transcriptional and epigenetic dysregulation of mu-opioid receptor signaling cascades. Dr. Daws identified an altered signaling pathway in postmortem tissue from human heroin abusers that associated with a polymorphism in the mu-opioid receptor. She went on to join the lab of Dr. Courtney Miller at the Scripps Research Institute in 2014 to study epigenetic mechanisms that regulate traumatic memory and was awarded a NARSAD Young Investigator Award, as well as a K00/R00 Pathway to Independence Award from NIDA for this work. Dr. Daws developed a mouse model of PTSD-like behavior and performed extensive sequencing analysis to identify molecular markers of susceptibility to long-lasting traumatic memories, including a microRNA that selectively regulates long-term memory strength. In 2018, she joined the faculty of Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology. Dr. Daws is a primary member of the Center for Substance Abuse Research and the central focus of her lab is to identify molecular mechanisms that mediate long-lasting drug-seeking behaviors after withdrawal.