Dr. Mark Chen, a Susan Nolen-Hoeksema Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology, has received the Spotlight on a Mentor Award from the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT). Congratulations, Mark!

Dr. Gee was recently interviewed by Dr. Arielle Keller for Flux about her science and career after receiving the FABBS Early Career Impact Award. You can read more here. 

Congratulations to Felicia, who has received the Flux Society’s Dissertation Award! Dr. Hardi recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, and her dissertation focused on the longitudinal association between adverse experiences, structural and functional networks, and mental health.

The CANDLab welcomes incoming Wu Tsai Institute Postdoctoral Fellow Felicia Hardi!

The CANDLab is excited to work with an amazing group of high school and college students conducting research in the lab this summer! We are delighted to welcome Caroline Alessio, Allison Drew, Chase Goldner, Hemakshi Gordy, Jaeyee Jung, Emilie Ma, Alex Martinez-Garcia, Karla Mendez Vasquez, Alondra Moreno Santana, Emma Robertson, Jay Simms, and Grayson Vives.

Sahana Kribakaran, who completed her Ph.D. in the CANDLab, received two major awards at her M.D./Ph.D. graduation. She received The MD-PhD Award, awarded to an outstanding member of graduating MD-PhD class who has shown excellence in both research and clinical activities, and the Yale Student Social Justice Activism Award, presented to a graduating student who demonstrated a strong commitment to community engagement, advocacy, and social justice. Congratulations, Dr. Kribakaran!

Congratulations to graduating senior Ariana Reichler, who has received the Robert J. Glushko Prize for Distinguished Undergraduate Research in Cognitive Science! This award recognizes a graduating senior in Yale College whose senior thesis demonstrates remarkable achievement and discovery in Cognitive Science. Ariana’s thesis is titled “Exploring Associations between Childhood Unpredictability, Emotional Memory, and Psychopathology” and examines how unpredictable environments early in life may shape affective learning and memory in ways that affect mental health. Amazing work, Ariana!

Emily Cohodes has received the Department of Psychology’s Grossman Dissertation Award! Emily’s dissertation “A Dimensional Approach to Assessing the Effects of Early-Life Stress on Mental Health across Development” focused on parsing heterogeneity in experiences of adversity to increase understanding of the mechanisms linking early adversity with risk for psychopathology. Congratulations, Em!

Elizabeth Kitt has received with the P.E.O. Scholar Award! Recipients of the $25,000 merit-based award are a select group of women chosen for their high level of academic achievement and their potential for having a positive impact on society. Congrats, Elizabeth!

Dr. Gee was featured in a recent New York Times article focused on how to talk with teens. Dr. Gee's work has examined how caregivers modulate neural circuitry in children's and adolescents' brains to support affective learning and regulation, with implications for how caregivers can optimally communicate with their kids.

Dr. Kelley Gunther has completed her Susan Nolen-Hoeksema Postdoctoral Fellowship and will be starting a new role as an Assistant Research Scientist at the Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS) at the University of Maryland. We are so excited for you, Kelley! Thank you so much for your contributions to the lab and we are going to miss you. Congratulations!

Lucinda Sisk, a Ph.D. student in the CANDLab, has been recognized by the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Student and Early Career Council with an Honorable Mention for the 2023 Dissertation Research Funding Award. This award recognizes dissertation research proposals that are exceptionally noteworthy and display a strong potential to contribute to the field of child development. Congratulations, Lucinda! 

Dr. Alexis Brieant has completed her postdoctoral fellowship and will be launching her lab at the University of Vermont as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Science! We are so grateful for the opportunity to work with you and will miss you so much. You can check out Alexis’s new lab here. Congrats, Alexis, and we can’t wait to follow your exciting work!

Congratulations to CANDLab graduate student Emily Cohodes, who received this year's William Kessen Teaching Award from Yale's Department of Psychology! The William Kessen Teaching Award is presented annually to a graduate student in psychology who best exemplifies the spirit, vitality, and commitment to teaching that Professor Kessen was known for.

Dr. Ka Ip's paper entitled "Associations among Household and Neighborhood Socioeconomic Disadvantages, Resting-state Frontoamygdala Connectivity, and Internalizing Symptoms in Youth" published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience was recently selected as a Finalist for the Yale Office of Health Equity Research's OHER Award for Yale Research Excellence. Congratulations to Ka and team!

Congrats to Jordan Foster, a Ph.D. student in the CANDLab, who has been selected as an inaugural Future Directions Fellow! Jordan will present his research and be honored with this award at the 2022 Future Directions Forum.

Sahana Kribakaran, an MD/PhD student in the CANDLab, successfully defended her dissertation titled “Investigating the Associations Between Trauma Exposure and Conditioned Inhibition of Fear in Development”! Next she will be returning to medical school to complete the remainder of her MD/PhD program. Congratulations, Dr. Kribakaran!

Bailey Holt-Gosselin, a Ph.D. student in the CANDLab, was recently awarded an NIMH NRSA F31! Bailey's research will focus on "Neurobiological markers of risk and resilience for psychopathology in youth at familial risk for mood disorders." Congratulations, Bailey!!

Dr. Erik Nook has officially wrapped up his postdoc in the CANDLab and is starting as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Princeton. It has been such a joy to work with you, Erik. We are going to miss you so much but are so excited to see all of the innovative research to come from the Logic of Emotion Lab!

The CANDLab's studies on neural mechanisms of symptom reduction in psychosocial treatments for youth with anxiety disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were recently featured in an article by Dr. Randi Epstein in the Yale Alumni Maganize. The lab is examining how children's brains change as their anxiety is treated through a parent-based treatment in collaboration with Dr. Eli Lebowitz's group and how trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy helps to strengthen emotion regulation and reduce symptoms of PTSD in collaboration with Dr. Carla Stover's group at the Child Study Center.

Congratulations to our incredible graduating undergraduate research assistants: Reta Behnam, Mikah Covelli, Isabel Santiuste, Georgia Spurrier, Alissa Wong, and Daphne Zhu! We are so grateful for your contributions to our research and are so excited to see what you all accomplish next! Pictured top left to bottom right: Alissa Wong, Isabel Santiuste, Georgia Spurrier, Mikah Covelli, Reta Behnam, and Daphne Zhu.

Elizabeth Kitt, a PhD student in the CANDLab, has been recognized by the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology/APA Division 53 (SCCAP) with an Honorable Mention for the 2022 Early Stage Student Achievement Award in Research! The Student Achievement Award in Research recognizes students who have made a significant contribution to the field of clinical child and adolescent psychology through research, teaching, mentoring, and community engagement. Congratulations, Elizabeth!

CANDLab senior undergraduate research assistants, Isabel Santiuste, Georgia Spurrier, Alissa Wong, and Daphne Zhu, presented their senior theses at our final lab meeting of the semester. Isabel presented on “The Effects of Caregiver Involvement in Early Life Stress on Neural Circuitry in Adults”, Georgia presented on “The Effect of Stressor Controllability on Physiological Responsivity and Perceived Stress: The Potential Modulating Effect of Trauma Exposure," Alissa presented on “Amygdala Functional Connectivity during Safety Signal Learning in Anxious and Non-Anxious Individuals," and Daphne presented on “Bridging the Laboratory and the Field: Neural Correlates of Dimensions of Reappraisal”.  It was so exciting to hear about their research on a wide range of topics relating to child and adolescent brain and behavioral development. Congratulations on your incredible thesis work, we are so proud of you!

Dr. Ka Ip, a postdoctoral fellow in the CANDLab, has received a grant from the Society for Research on Child Development for his project titled "Parsing Heterogeneity in Culturally-Salient Stressors among Communities of Color and the Intergenerational Effect on Child Socio-emotional Outcomes". More information about the program and Ka's work is available here: https://www.srcd.org/news/announcing-2022-recipients-small-grants-progra.... Congratulations, Ka!

Elizabeth Kitt, a PhD student in the CANDLab, received the Anxiety and Depression Association of America's Child and Adolescent SIG Student/Early Career Award for her abstract on "Using Family-Level Factors to Optimize Treatment for Childhood Anxiety during the COVID-19 Pandemic"! Congratulations, Elizabeth!

Erik Nook, Postdoctoral Fellow in the CANDLab, has been awarded a National Science Foundation Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (NSF SPRF)! Erik's research will use experience sampling and fMRI to examine the neural mechanisms that support emotion differentiation and the psychological mechanisms linking emotion differentiation with mental health. Congratulations, Erik! 

Isabel Santiuste, an undergraduate conducting her thesis research in the CANDLab, has received a summer research fellowship through the Wu Tsai Institute at Yale. As a MIND Scholar, Isabel is among the first cohort of Wu Tsai Undergraduate Scholars. Isabel's project this summer will examine dimensions of stress exposure associated with corticolimbic brain development and emotional behavior. Congratulations, Isabel!

Lucinda Sisk, Ph.D. student in the CANDLab, has been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program award. Congratulations, Lucinda! 

Congratulations to Dr. Gee, who has been selected by the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology to receive the 2021 SSCP Susan Nolen-Hoeksema Early Career Research Award. This award is given to outstanding early career research scientists who have provided exceptional contributions to the science of clinical psychology, and is “dedicated to the memory of Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Chair and Professor of Psychology at Yale University and SSCP member, who was known during her career as an outstanding clinical research scientist and a strong advocate and mentor to many students in clinical psychology. Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema passed away on January 2, 2013.”

Congratulations to Dr. Gee, who has been elected to Associate Membership of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). Founded in 1961, ACNP is a professional, international organization of leading brain scientists. Membership is by nomination only, on the basis of original research contributions, drawing from scientists in diverse subfields of neuroscience. You can read more in the announcement here.

Congratulations to postdoctoral fellow Dr. Ka Ip, who has received the Marquis Dissertation Award from the University of Michigan! Ka's dissertation work was entitled “Emotion Regulation in Three Cultures: A Multi-contextual and Multi-level Study of Preschool-age Children in the United States, China and Japan.”

Congratulations to Dr. Gee who has received the APA's Early Career Award for Outstanding Contributions to Benefit Children, Youth, and Families! This award from the APA Committee on Children, Youth and Families recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions in science, policy and practice that benefit the psychological functioning and well-being of children, youth, and families.

Congratulations to Emily Cohodes, who has received the Elizabeth Munsterberg Koppitz Child Psychology Graduate Student Fellowship! The Koppitz Fellowship provides $25,000 for innovative research in child psychology and will support Em's work on early adversity, brain development, and mental health.

Congratulations to our amazing graduating research assistants! We are so grateful for your incredible contributions to our research on the developing brain and so proud of all that you have accomplished! (From top left to bottom right: Lizzie Adelson, Brittany Clarke, Haley Hegefeld, Hannah Logan, Lexi Hopkins, Raissa Muller, Jasmyne Pierre, Beatriz Rios, Hopewell Rogers, Sterling Strother).

Congratulations to incoming Ph.D. student Elizabeth Kitt on receiving a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program award! So well deserved!

Congratulations to CANDLab Ph.D. student Paola Odriozola who was honored with the P.E.O. Scholar Award! Recipients of the $15,000 merit-based award are a select group of women chosen for their high level of academic achievement and their potential for having a positive impact on society.

CANDLab Ph.D. student Emily Cohodes was selected to receive the Routh Dissertation Grant from the Society for Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology for her dissertation entitled "Parsing heterogeneity in the effects of stress on frontolimbic circuitry across development." The Routh Dissertation Grant provides support for student research that shows promise to add significantly to the research literature in the area of clinical child and adolescent psychology. Congratulations, Em! 

This week CANDLab senior Jasmyne Pierre presented her thesis on "Protection and vulnerability in the face of trauma: discrimination, ethnic identity, and perceived stress" at her residential college's Mellon Forum. Congratulations to Jasmyne on a wonderful talk!

A cross-species collaborative study between the CANDLab and Dr. Francis Lee's lab at Weill Cornell Medicine was recently published in PNAS. In this new research we found that learned safety signals reduced threat responding across mice and humans. In mice (led by co-first author Dr. Heidi Meyer), fiber photometry recordings demonstrated that ventral hippocampal neurons projecting to prelimbic cortex (but not infralimbic cortex or the basolateral amygdala) were involved in conditioned inhibition via learned safety. Parallel findings in humans (led by co-first author Paola Odriozola) demonstrated the involvement of hippocampal-dorsal ACC (but not hippocampal-ventromedial PFC or hippocampal-amygdala). Importantly, this pathway differed from the ventromedial PFC-amygdala pathway implicated in fear extinction. These findings have broad implications for optimizing interventions for anxiety disorders and for investigating novel approaches to fear reduction. Read more about these findings here.

Congratulations to our high school summer interns from the Yale Summer Science Institute on presenting your final projects! Thank you Lesly Mellado, Manny Candelo-Diaz, and Achintya Bairat for your work in CANDLab this summer!

CANDLab undergraduate Jasmyne Pierre was recently awarded the Mamie Phipps Clark Diversity Undergraduate Research Grant from Psi Chi! This award will fund Jasmyne's senior thesis on discrimination-related stress and mental health. Congratulations to Jasmyne on this very well deserved award!

Congratulations to all of our amazing graduating research assistants! Thank you for your important contributions to our work on the developing brain. We are so lucky to have had you in lab, and you will all be so missed! We can’t wait to hear of all of your future accomplishments!

Congratulations to Dr. Gee, who was awarded the Arthur Greer Memorial Prize for Outstanding Research!

Congratulations to Dr. Gee who was awarded the Poorvu Family Fund for Academic Innovation award! Read more about this honor here.

The CANDLab is excited to be launching a new clinical trial of a novel treatment for pediatric anxiety disorders! We will be studying how the brain changes during treatment in ways that help to reduce children's anxiety. The study was recently featured in a newsletter from the NIMH Director, and you can read more here!

The Clinical Affective Neuroscience & Development Lab at Yale, directed by Dr. Dylan Gee, is seeking a full-time research assistant to begin in summer or fall 2018 (start date flexible) to coordinate a new NIMH-funded study of the neural mechanisms underlying a novel psychosocial treatment for pediatric anxiety disorders. The lab uses behavioral, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging techniques to study the development of anxiety and stress-related disorders across childhood and adolescence and ways to optimize interventions based on the developing brain.

Primary responsibilities will include recruiting and screening participants; acquiring, managing, and analyzing data (behavioral, psychophysiological, MRI); working with children, adolescents, and their parents in a research setting; performing administrative duties (e.g., assisting with IRB protocols and grants); and coordinating the lab’s collaboration with the Yale Child Study Center (co-PI: Dr. Eli Lebowitz).

Requirements include a Bachelor’s degree in psychology, neuroscience, or related field; interest in clinical psychology and neuroscience; and excellent organizational, interpersonal, communication, and time management skills. Competitive candidates will have prior research experience with children and adolescents and/or neuroimaging experience. A 2-year commitment is preferred.

This position is ideal for those interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in clinical or developmental psychology or neuroscience. The laboratory is located within the Department of Psychology and collaborates closely with the Yale Child Study Center, thus providing an excellent training environment at the intersection of research and clinical practice. The research assistant will participate in all aspects of the research process, have opportunities to work on a variety of exciting research projects, and gain experience working with both typically developing and clinical populations. The ideal candidate will likely make intellectual contributions to the lab’s research, which may result in opportunities to co-author manuscripts, and will benefit from the vibrant scientific community at Yale.

Applicants should send a cover letter (describing research experiences, interests, and long-term goals), CV, and contact information for 2-3 references to Dylan Gee at dylan.gee@yale.edu.

The CANDLab congratulates Ph.D. student Camila Caballero on her recent Ford Foundation Fellowship! Through its Fellowship Programs, the Ford Foundation seeks to increase the diversity of the nation’s college and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, to maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and to increase the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students. This national competition is administered by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on behalf of the Ford Foundation. Read more here: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/FordFellowships/index.htm. Way to go, Camila! 

Congrats to CANDLab Ph.D. student Emily Cohodes, who has received the APA's Early Graduate Student Researcher Award! This award recognizes students for conducting outstanding research early in their graduate training.

The CANDLab is seeking a full-time research assistant to begin in early or mid 2018 (start date flexible). The lab uses behavioral, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging techniques to study the development of anxiety disorders across childhood and adolescence. We are especially interested in typical and atypical trajectories of brain development related to emotional behavior, the effects of early-life adversity, and translating knowledge from basic science to optimize clinical treatments for anxiety and stress-related disorders. The laboratory is located within the Department of Psychology, which provides an excellent research and training environment.

Primary responsibilities will include screening and recruiting participants; acquiring data (behavioral, psychophysiological, MRI); managing and analyzing data; working with children, adolescents, and their parents in a research setting; assisting in experimental paradigm development; and managing the lab and performing administrative duties (e.g., assisting with IRB protocols and grants).

Requirements include a Bachelor’s degree in psychology, neuroscience, or related field; interest in clinical developmental neuroscience; strong statistical and technical skills (e.g., R, MATLAB, Python); and excellent organizational, interpersonal, communication, and time management skills. Competitive candidates will have prior research experience with children and adolescents, neuroimaging experience (e.g., fMRI data analysis in FSL, AFNI, or a similar platform), and familiarity with IRB protocol submissions. A 2-year commitment is required.

This position is ideal for those interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in clinical or developmental psychology or neuroscience. The research assistant will participate in all aspects of the research process, have opportunities to work on a variety of exciting research projects, and gain experience working with both typically developing and clinical populations. The ideal candidate will likely make intellectual contributions to the lab’s research, which may result in opportunities to co-author manuscripts, and will benefit from the vibrant scientific community at Yale.

Applicants should send a cover letter (describing research experiences, interests, and long-term goals), CV, and contact information for 2-3 references to Dylan Gee at dylan.gee@yale.edu.

Ph.D. students Emily Cohodes and Paola Odriozola have been selected to attend the "Modeling Developmental Change: Practical Integration of Advanced Neuroimaging and Statistical Methods" pre-meeting workshop at the Flux Congress in Portland, OR, and Paola received a travel award. Longitudinal MRI datasets require special consideration for processing and analysis, yet the field as a whole has not standardized best practices for these datasets, which could be one reason why it is difficult to replicate results across laboratories and research studies. This two-day workshop will teach best practices for processing, analyzing, modeling, and interpreting longitudinal neuroimaging data. This will help researchers conduct robust and reproducible research on how the brain and cognition change across development. We're excited to apply these methods to our ongoing longitudinal studies in the CANDLab! Congrats, Paola and Em!

Dr. Gee recently participated in the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China. She was selected as part of the Young Scientists community, which "brings together the most forward-thinking and advanced young scientific minds in the world. They are selected from all regions and a wide range of disciplines, and have a track record of advancing the frontiers of science, technology and environment in areas of high societal impact. In their work, they exhibit exceptional creativity, thought leadership and high growth potential. Under the age of 40, these individuals have demonstrated their commitment to public service and actively play a transformational role in integrating scientific knowledge into society for the public good." Dr. Gee discussed her research and the role of neuroscience in the Fourth Industrial Revolution alongside 2,000 business leaders, policymakers, and fellow scientists. You can read more about the scientists selected for the 2017 cohort here.

Congrats to Luise Pruessner, who received a travel award to attend the Society for Psychotherapy Research annual meeting! The meeting will be held in Toronto in June.

Dr. Gee has been selected as a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science. The Rising Star designation recognizes outstanding psychological scientists in the earliest stages of their research career post-PhD whose innovative work has already advanced the field and signals great potential for their continued contributions. More information on the Rising Star award is available here.

Congratulations to Paola, who received a travel fellowship for the upcoming Tools of the Trade Workshop at UCLA! The workshop will focus on best practices in human neuroimaging methods and is funded by the NIH and Stanford Center for Reproducible Neuroscience. Read more about the workshop here.

Dr. Gee was recently interviewed on The Academic Minute to discuss the increased risk for anxiety in adolescence. Hear more on the research at http://academicminute.org/2016/07/dylan-gee-weill-medical-college-at-cor...

The CANDLab welcomes Jason Haberman, our new lab manager!

The CANDLab welcomes incoming Ph.D. student Paola Odriozola! Paola is joining Yale's neuroscience program.

Our new paper in PNAS on adolescent risk for anxiety, which was conducted in the labs of BJ Casey and Francis Lee and in collaboration with the PING Consortium, has been featured in news outlets including PBS News Hour (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/is-this-mutation-causing-your-teenag...) and the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/even-more-evidence-anxiety-can-be-bi...?).

Dr. Gee recently attended the NIH’s High Risk High Reward symposium in Bethesda, MD, to present her latest research and receive the NIH Director's Early Independence Award, which will provide funding of up to $1.25M for a 5-year study of novel mechanisms of fear reduction in pediatric anxiety disorders.

Dr. Gee has received a NARSAD Young Investigator Grant! Read more here: https://bbrfoundation.org/sites/bbrf.civicactions.net/files/file-downloa...