Daniela Kaufer seeks to determine the basis of human mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, looking for new ways to treat and prevent them.

She mediates between the disciplines of psychology, physiology and molecular neuroscience. Research in the Kaufer lab focuses on the events that underlie the plasticity of the brain in the face of stress and neurological insults throughout life, with a particular focus on plasticity involving adult neural stem cells and across the glia-neurovascular unit. Specifically, a major project aims at studying the effects of early life stress on creating vulnerability to mental disease throughout life, with a focus on regulation and functional relevance of adult hippocampal stem cells.