About

Dr. Beck Brachman is a pioneer in the field of preventative psychopharmacology, developing drugs to enhance stress resilience and prevent mental illness.

Current treatments for mood disorders only suppress symptoms without addressing the underlying disease, and there are no known cures. Alexigents, a novel drug class that enhances stress resilience, would be the first medicines to prevent psychiatric disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression.

Dr. Brachman is a neuroscientist and co-founder & CEO of IMPRINT, a Focused Research Organization building forensic immunology tools to identify the hidden causes of and cures for chronic disease. IMPRINT is supported by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Convergent Research, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, and Peter Reinhardt.

Brachman obtained her PhD in Neuroscience from Columbia University, prior to which she was a fellow at the National Institutes of Health, where she discovered that immune cells carry a memory of psychological stress and that white blood cells can act as antidepressants and resilience-enhancers. She is a TED Fellow, 2024 SpecTech BRAINS Fellow, 2019 Cornell Tech Runway Fellow, 2017 NYCEDC Entrepreneurship Lab Fellow, and Helena Brain Trust member. Brachman's research has been featured in The Atlantic, WIRED and Business Insider, and her work was described by Dr. George Slavich on NPR as a "moonshot project that is very much needed in the mental health arena."

Brachman also previously served as the director of NeuWrite, a national network of science-writing groups that fosters ongoing collaboration between scientists, writers, and artists.