Raquel E. Gur, MD, PhD
is the Karl and Linda Rickels Professor of Psychiatry, Vice Chair for CHOP-Penn Research Integration, Co-Director of the Penn Translational Neuroscience Center and, Director of the Lifespan Brain Institute at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She holds secondary professorial appointments in the Departments of Neurology and Radiology.
Her combined training in Psychology, Neurology and Psychiatry has provided the tools to pursue an academic career working with basic and clinical neuroscientists to advance the understanding of schizophrenia. In directing these research endeavors, she has interacted with scientists of diverse backgrounds, conducted collaborative interdisciplinary research, mentored junior faculty and trainees, and has come to know many patients and their families.
She is a member and has served in organizations including the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the NIMH Council and the American Psychiatric Association task forces including the DSM-5 Psychosis work group. She is Past President of both the Society of Biological Psychiatry and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. NIMH has supported her research efforts and she has over 500 publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Stephen Hinshaw, PhD
is Vice-Chair for Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco and Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a former chair of the Psychology Department at UC Berkeley, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the former president of the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology.
Hinshaw is a leader in the field of developmental psychopathology and a scholar of the stigmatization of mental illness. He investigates the earliest signs and progression of childhood psychiatric disorders, particularly attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He has authored over 300 scientific publications (h-index, Google Scholar: 96) and 12 books, including The ADHD Explosion: Myths, Medication, Money and Today’s Push for Performance, The Triple Bind: Saving Our Teenage Girls from Today’s Pressures, and The Mark of Shame: Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change. A significant public voice, he has been interviewed by Time magazine, USA Today, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among other publications, and has appeared on The Today Show and Good Morning America.
Bennett Leventhal, MD
is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco, and Deputy Director and Director of Training for Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute University of California San Francisco. He also is Irving B. Harris Professor Emeritus of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Chicago, a Professor in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.
Dr. Leventhal is widely recognized for his leadership and expertise in fostering career development and training programs as well as collaborative research networks that focus on everything from molecular genetics to community service and public health. His direction and vision have led to the creation of nationally prominent clinical research programs that continue to shape how we study childhood psychiatric disorders. Dr. Leventhal has championed initiatives to advance research on the molecular genetics of autism, the prenatal origins of disruptive behavior disorders and the brain mechanisms that interfere with social functioning. He also helped establish a global network of scientists who are currently investigating the origins of mental health disorders that emerge during the first few years of life.
Kathleen Merikangas, PhD
is serving as a member of the Child Mind Institute’s Scientific Research Council in her personal capacity and not as a federal agency representative. Dr. Merikangas received a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in experimental psychology and music from the University of Notre Dame. She received clinical training through an NIAAA-sponsored master’s program and internship at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where she continued to conduct clinical research on the Affective Disorders Clinical Research Unit while she pursued a PhD in chronic disease epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health. She completed post-doctoral training in population genetics/genetic epidemiology at the Yale University School of Medicine, where she joined the faculty and ultimately became Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, Psychiatry and Psychology and the director of the Genetic Epidemiology Research Unit in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health.
Dr. Kathleen Merikangas’ work is at the forefront of public health approaches to psychiatric disease, bringing together emphases on familial mechanisms of comorbidity, early risk identification and large-scale population-based studies. Her current research promises to have important implications for targets of prevention and treatment of affective illness. Dr. Merikangas has authored or co-authored more than 300 scientific publications and has presented lectures throughout the U.S. and in more than 20 countries.
Kenneth R. Pugh, PhD
is the President and Director of Research at Haskins Laboratories, a Yale University and University of Connecticut affiliated inter-disciplinary institute, dedicated to the investigation of the biological bases of language. He also holds academic appointments as a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Connecticut, and as an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Yale University, and as an Associate Professor, Department of Diagnostic Radiology at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Pugh also directs the Yale Reading Center. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the International Dyslexia Association, the Scientific Advisory Panel for Dyslexia International in Paris, a corresponding member of the Rodin Remediation Academy in Stockholm, a member of the Board of Visitors for the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, and the Scientific Advisory Council for the Child Mind Institute in New York. Dr. Pugh served as a Member of the Language and Communications Study Section at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and also served as a member of the “Committee on the Learning Sciences: Foundations and Applications to Adolescent and Adult Literacy” at the National Research Council of the National Academies. His research program falls primarily in two broad domains: cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics. A fundamental interest continues to be research into the neurobiology of typical and atypical language and reading development in children.
Giovanni Abrahão Salum, MD, PhD
is an Assistant Professor in both the Department of Psychiatry and the Graduate Program in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil. Dr. Salum is a young investigator with experience in large scale studies integrating psychiatry, cognition, genetics and neuroscience using an epidemiological perspective. His work focuses on using information from genes, environments and cognitive neurosciences to understand psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents. He is the co-Investigator of the Brazilian High Risk Study for Psychiatric Disorders (Salum GA, 2015), which is one of the pioneer studies to integrate genetics, brain imaging and cognitive neuroscience into epidemiological and longitudinal designs in the community. He has authored or co-authored more than 120 scientific publications.