ISDP Announces 2018 Election Results

The ISDP releases the list of winning candidates from the 2018 election ballot. The newly elected President-Elect, Treasurer, Board Member and Student Representative assumed their roles following the ISDP 2018 meeting in San Diego.

President-elect, 2 Year Term:

Megan R. Gunnar, Ph.D.

I am running for president of ISDP because it is time. This organization has nurtured me since I was a postdoctoral student in Gig Levine’s lab. It is my favorite society because we bring together researchers studying psychobiology in animal models with those studying it in human children and adolescents. Over the years I have been a member, I have watched the footprint of human work increase, which is wonderful; but, at the same time I have seen the number of researchers using animal models decline. This is also happening in other societies that once allowed us to integrate animal and human work. We need to push back against this segregation. Translation and back translation between animal and human research is essential if we are to understand the psychobiological mechanisms involved in typical and atypical development. As president, I would increase our current efforts to promote integration of animal and human studies. I would also continue the society’s strong support for induction of young students, postdocs and junior faculty into the society to insure its long-term health.

Megan R. Gunnar, Regents Professor and Distinguished McKnight University Professor, is the Director of the Institute of Child Development and the Associate Director of the Center for Neurobehavioral Development at the University of Minnesota. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology with at Stanford University in 1978 and then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Psychoneuroendocrinology at Stanford Medical School. In 1979 she became an Assistant Professor of developmental psychology at the University of Minnesota moving through the ranks to Full Professor in 1990. Professor Gunnar has spent her career studying the regulation of stress in infants, children and adolescents and the role of early life adversity in shaping stress reactivity and regulation. She is the recipient of lifetime achievement awards from the American Psychological Association, Division 7 (Developmental), the Society for Research in Child Development, the Association for Psychological Science, and the International Society for Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Treasurer-elect – 1 Year, Treasurer, 3 Year Term

Bethany Reeb-Sutherland, Ph.D.

Dr. Bethany Reeb-Sutherland is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Florida International University. Her research examines the various biological and environmental factors that influence the development of individual differences in socio-emotional behavior in typical and atypical populations. Her research background aligns well with the translational nature of the International Society of Developmental Psychobiology. She conducted her graduate work using rodent models to examine how individual differences in mothers’ behaviors and stress profile moderate the effects of early life experience on her offspring’s social, emotional, and cognitive development. This work was then expanded to human pediatric populations during her post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Nathan Fox where she gained experience in infant and child social and emotional development and expertise in the acquisition and analysis of psychophysiological measures including EEG, ERP, and EMG. Her research has made major contributions in the identification of the various behavioral and neural mechanisms that contribute to the development and maintenance of anxiety. In addition, her research has furthered our understanding of the mechanisms involved in the development of heterogeneity in social behavior during infancy and toddlerhood. Thus far, her work has been published in 40+ peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and has been cited over 1500 times (h-index of 22). Her research has received federal funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Bethany has been a member of ISDP since 2000 when she joined as an undergraduate student. She served as ISDP’s program director from 2015-2017 at which time the annual meeting saw its greatest in attendance and membership since 2008. In addition, ISDP awarded her the 2017 FABBS Early Career Impact Award. She values and has been recognized for her mentorship of students; therefore, she enjoys participating in student events at ISDP including the Meet-the-Professors events and serving as a poster judge.

Board Member, 3 Year Term

Natalie Hiromi Brito, Ph.D.

Natalie Hiromi Brito, Ph.D., is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at NYU. Dr. Brito earned her Doctoral degree in Psychology with a concentration in Human Development and Public Policy from Georgetown University in 2013 under the mentorship of Dr. Rachel Barr. Prior to joining the NYU faculty, Dr. Brito spent two years as a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar and two years as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at Columbia University Medical Center working with Drs. Bill Fifer and Kim Noble.

As a developmental psychologist, Dr. Brito’s focus is on understanding how early social and cultural contexts shape the trajectory of neurocognitive development. Specifically, her research examines links between the early home environment and the development of memory and language during the first three years of life. She has published work on biological markers of early learning, parent-child interactions, bilingualism, and how individual differences help to explain brain-behavior associations during childhood.

Student Member Representative, 2 Year Term

Radha Raghuraman, Ph.D.

My interest lies in understanding the associative learning and memory mechanisms in mood disorders and psychiatric illnesses in adulthood, as a result of early life physiological and psychological stress. I am currently enrolled as a graduate student at NUS, Singapore in the ‘Synaptic Plasticity & Memory’ Lab under the supervision of Dr. Sajikumar Sreedharan, Department of Physiology, YLLSOM, Singapore (& under the co-supervision of Prof. Gal Ritcher-Levin, University of Haifa, Israel). I am trained in Indian classical vocal music and a great fan of classic rock/art/progressive rock and am a certified Yoga Instructor. I am currently the Vice-President of the Physiology Graduate Student Society), YLLSOM, School of Medicine, Singapore, since 2016. I am a Mentor for – Summer Interns/ Undergraduate Students, and a part of ‘Brain Camp Initiatives. I am also a distant mentor for a student doing PhD under the supervision of Dr. Denise Manahan Vaughn at University of Ruhr, Bochum, Department of Neurophysiology.