Category: Awards

Anna Vannucci is a doctoral candidate in Psychology at Columbia University, where she works in the Developmental Affective Neuroscience Lab (DANLab) under the mentorship of Dr. Nim Tottenham. Before pursuing her doctoral studies, Anna received a B.A. in Psychology from the College of the Holy Cross and an M.S. in Clinical Psychology from the Uniformed Services University. She spent a decade conducting research in clinical child psychology. This work inspired her to pursue a career in developmental neuroscience to understand how early environments shape the neurobiology of human emotional development. Anna is currently a D-SPAN Scholar and was previously a Fulbright Scholar. Her work has been supported by the American Psychological Foundation, International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, and National Institutes of Health. Anna’s research broadly asks: how is brain development influenced by early interpersonal (i.e., caregiving) adversity, and what affective knowledge is represented within these altered circuits? To address these questions, she leverages experimental, neuroimaging, machine learning, and experience sampling methods. Anna’s dissertation aims to determine how adaptations in midline cortico-subcortical circuitry following early adversity represent the interpersonal-affective “attachment” schemas learned during early caregiving experiences. Anna’s long-term goal is to lead an interdisciplinary research team that investigates the developmental neurocomputational mechanisms that link early-life adversity to affective behaviors.

Dr. Kathryn Humphreys earned her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and trained in developmental psychopathology and developmental neuroscience. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt University, is a member of the Clinical Science, Developmental Science, and Educational Neuroscience faculty, and directs the SEA (Stress and Early Adversity) Lab.

Early adversity changes the economic conditions of mouse structural brain network organization
S. Carozza, J. Holmes, P.E. Vertes, E. Bullmore, T.M. Arefin,
A. Pugliese, J. Zhang, A. Kaffman, D. Akarca, D.E. Astle
Developmental Psychobiology, 2023, 65:e22405

Emily Cohodes is a doctoral candidate in Clinical Psychology at Yale University, where she works in the Clinical Affective Neuroscience and Development Lab (CANDLab) under the mentorship of Dr. Dylan Gee. Throughout graduate school, Emily has also worked with children and families as a clinician at the Yale Child Study Center. Prior to pursuing her doctoral studies, she received a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University and worked as a research coordinator at the UCSF Child Trauma Research Program (CTRP) at San Francisco General Hospital under the mentorship of Dr. Alicia Lieberman and Dr. Nicki Bush. At CTRP, Emily was involved in coordinating studies examining the efficacy of Child-Parent Psychotherapy and the impacts of early childhood adversity on executive function development and biomarkers of stress. Emily was previously a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, and her work has been supported by the American Psychological Foundation, American Association of University Women, Philanthropic Educational Organization, Society for Research in Child Development, American Psychological Association, Academy of Psychological Clinical Science, and the Society for Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. Emily’s broad program of research harnesses a multidimensional approach to examine how early-life stress exposure affects brain development and mental health. Her latest work lies at the intersection of clinical interviewing, neuroimaging, and machine learning-based approaches and aims to isolate specific features of stress exposure (e.g., chronicity, type, caregiver involvement) that may affect how stress exposure “gets under the skin” to affect brain and behavioral development at specific developmental periods across the lifespan, with important implications for both policy and clinical practice.

The 2023 Senior Investigator Award goes to George Frederick Michel. He will be presented with the award and give a talk on his work at ISDP 2023 in Utrecht.