Addiction specialist Jasmin Vassileva earns a Fulbright – and a return home

By Drew Thompson

When Jasmin Vassileva returns to her homeland early next year - roughly four decades after she initially left - she said it will reflect "one of the most meaningful personal and professional accomplishments that I've had."

Vassileva, Ph.D., a Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine psychiatry researcher specializing in addiction, has been honored with a Fulbright scholarship that is sending her to New Bulgarian University for five months starting Feb. 1.

"As a Bulgarian citizen who grew up in Bulgaria during Communism," Vassileva said, "representing the United States as a Fulbright scholar in my native country is a great honor."

Vassileva has worked previously in Bulgaria, setting up a satellite lab for neurocognitive research at the Bulgarian Addictions Institute. But through the Fulbright, a government-sponsored academic exchange program, she will have a deeper opportunity to improve addiction neuroscience technology, which she says is severely underdeveloped in the country.

The Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies at VCU has been instrumental in preparing Vassileva's research in Bulgaria. She works to identify factors that lead to addiction and the effects of long-term drug use on the brain.

Her research in Bulgaria evaluates opiate and stimulant users through neurocognitive tasks, and the country - which has more people dependent on one drug as opposed to wider options in the United States - could offer more precise research findings. Through the Fulbright scholarship, Vassileva said, she could explore treatments that might include a mobile app that supports common functions impaired by substance use, such as memory, attention, cognitive flexibility and decision-making.

After leaving Bulgaria in the late 1980s, Vassileva moved to Canada and then the United States, where she earned her Ph.D. in clinical neuropsychology at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science.

She worked at the University of Illinois Chicago before Gerard Moeller, M.D., director of Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies, recruited her to VCU in 2014.

Vassileva said her time at VCU and in the U.S. has created a strong platform through which she can serve her native country.

"Growing up in Bulgaria it has always been my dream to live in the United States ever since I was 10 or 12," she said. "I'm really grateful for having this opportunity and to bring what I've learned here back to Bulgaria."