Dr. Dahne is a tenured Professor in the Addiction Sciences Division of the Medical University of South Carolina's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Melvyn Berlinsky Distinguished Endowed Chair in Cancer Research within MUSC's NCI-designated Hollings Cancer Center. She serves in numerous key leadership roles across MUSC, including Director of Research Innovation and Integration within MUSC’s Office of the Vice President for Research, Director of the Pilots and Element E Programs within the South Carolina Clinical & Translational Research Institute, Associate Director of MUSC’s HRSA-funded Telehealth Center of Excellence, and Director of the Innovation Sciences Unit within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Across these roles, Dr. Dahne supports new research innovations and ensures that they are feasible and aligned with the needs of the communities MUSC serves. She also works to deploy research across the entire MUSC enterprise, including MUSC Health and the MUSC Regional Health Network, and to advance novel methods for delivering both research and clinical care.
Dr. Dahne directs the Behavioral Health Innovations Lab within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Hollings Cancer Center. Her lab includes a team of research staff and trainees who work together to leverage digital health to significantly reduce the public health impact of behavioral health disorders. This work focuses on advancing cancer prevention efforts via tobacco cessation, improving the delivery of depression treatment, addressing the needs of cancer survivors, and partnering with clinical care delivery settings such as primary care to improve access to high-quality behavioral health treatment. Dr. Dahne is particularly interested in delivering care to those with the greatest need, including residents of rural areas and individuals with physical and mental health comorbidities. Implementation science is woven throughout Dr. Dahne’s research portfolio, keeping real-world application at the forefront of intervention design and ensuring that innovations demonstrated to be efficacious can be rapidly adopted and sustained. Dr. Dahne is also a national leader in decentralized clinical trials, which can extend the reach of biomedical research well beyond traditional academic medical centers. Dr. Dahne has been continuously funded as a principal investigator by the National Institutes of Health throughout her entire faculty appointment and has been awarded more than $18.5 million in research funding as PI. Her current portfolio includes numerous R01 awards as well as an R42 (fast-track STTR) award.
Academic entrepreneurship is an additional vehicle through which Dr. Dahne disseminates the innovations developed within her lab. She has led six STTR grants, including Phase I, Phase II, and fast-track awards. These technologies have in turn formed the basis for two academic spinout companies that she co-founded. Dr. Dahne particularly enjoys mentoring others in academic entrepreneurship.
Dr. Dahne's contributions to science have been recognized through a number of honors. She was named a National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leader in 2023 and received the South Carolina Governor's Young Scientist Award for Excellence in Scientific Research in 2025. Additional recognition includes the MUSC President's Values in Action Award for Innovation and the MUSC College of Medicine Research Excellence Award.
Dr. Dahne is particularly keen to mentor the next generation of difference makers. She mentors high school, undergraduate, graduate, and medical students, as well as postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty, across a variety of training mechanisms. Her commitment to mentorship was recognized with the 2025 Outstanding Research Mentor Award from the MUSC Clinical Psychology Internship Program.
A full list of Dr. Dahne's publications can be accessed via the PubMed link on this page and more information about her research lab can be found by following the Research Profile link.