David Barker is assistant professor of psychology at Rutgers University and a member of the Rutgers Brain Health Institute and the Rutgers Addiction Research Center. His lab focuses on how positive and negative affective states influence drug use, especially after pain and traumatic stress. Barker is also an advocate of open science and the creator of pMAT, a tool used around the world for the analysis of fiber photometry data.
After earning a B.S. in psychology from Arizona State University under Peter Killeen, Barker completed his M.S. and Ph.D. in behavioral and systems neuroscience in Mark West’s lab at Rutgers University. He then completed his postdoctoral training at the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse under Marisela Morales before being recruited back to Rutgers as a member of the faculty.
