The Yale Child Study Center (YCSC) is a leader in understanding psychiatric disorders, child development, and the social, behavioral, and emotional adjustment of children. In the face of a continued surge in mental health needs worldwide, YCSC Director Linda Mayes, MD continues to focus on recruiting and retaining dedicated faculty conducting cutting edge research and providing outstanding clinical care, and looks forward to welcoming new members to the YCSC community this summer.
“As we continue to experience a dramatic increase in referrals for behavioral health needs, we remain committed to developing our faculty, who have outstanding promise as innovative researchers and clinicians, and who have the capacity to conduct transformative science in child behavioral health,” commented Mayes.
An interdisciplinary department at Yale University School of Medicine, YCSC is comprised of faculty and staff with multiple areas of expertise coming together to advance the mission of the center. Among the many disciplines are child psychiatry, pediatrics, genetics, neurobiology, epidemiology, psychology, nursing, social work, and social policy; each presents a unique perspective on the complex problems facing children, adolescents, and families. The following clinicians and scientists will be joining the YCSC faculty as of July 1, 2022.
Uche Asuzu, MD, MHS: After earning her MHS at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Asuzu completed her residency within the Duke University Health System. Her research focuses on investigating how digital technology can be used improve access to care, assess high risk behaviors/symptoms, and deliver prevention interventions for substance use among adolescents. She will be working with substance using adolescents and delivering treatments for them and for their families.
Brianna Brower, PhD: Before joining the faculty, Brower completed her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and earned a BA from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Her research focuses on the effects of racial trauma on cultural mistrust and perceptions of police. She will be joining outpatient clinical services where she will bring her expertise in trauma intervention, evidence-based practice, and psychological assessment to the YCSC clinical practice.
As we continue to experience a dramatic increase in referrals for behavioral health needs, we remain committed to developing our faculty, who have outstanding promise as innovative researchers and clinicians, and who have the capacity to conduct transformative science in child behavioral health.
Linda Mayes, MD
Cara Keifer, PhD: Currently providing psychology support for developmental disabilities cases as a postdoctoral associate, Keifer also works with James McPartland, PhD on diagnostic, developmental, and behavioral assessments of children with autism and other developmental disabilities disorders. Kiefer’s research interests include examining the neural correlates of social motivation in individuals with ASD as well as investigating mechanisms of change in interventions for individuals on the spectrum.
Emily Olfson, MD, PhD: Prior to coming to Yale, Olfson completed the MD-PhD program at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis where her dissertation in Human and Statistical Genetics focused on the genetics of smoking and alcoholism. Her research focuses on the neurogenomic underpinnings of childhood neuropsychiatric conditions, including trichotillomania, excoriation disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and childhood anxiety disorders. Under the mentorship of Thomas Fernandez, MD and Michael Bloch, MD, she has developed the first whole-exome sequencing study focused on parent-child trios impacted by body-focused repetitive behaviors, the Trichotillomania And other BFRBs Sequencing Study.
Jose Paez, MD: While attending medical school at the Universidad Iberoamericana in the Dominican Republic, Paez volunteered at the local psychiatric hospital and worked to de-stigmatize mental health in the Dominican community. After finishing medical school, he was trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy. He worked as a psychotherapist in Philadelphia for four years before starting residency in adult psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City. He joined the YCSC for a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship, serving as one of the Chief Fellows. In his new faculty role, he will provide critical care in the inpatient unit.
Kartik Pattabiraman, MD, PhD: Before joining Yale as a Fellow in the Solnit Integrated Training Program, Pattabiraman earned his MD, PhD at the University of California San Diego, where he studied early cortical development. Currently working in the laboratory run by Nenad Sestan, MD, PhD at Yale, Pattabiraman has continued to develop research on retinoic acid signaling in development and specialization of the human prefrontal cortex. More broadly, he is working on approaches to modulating prefrontal cortex circuitry during development in order to better model circuit changes described in patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder and schizophrenia, and interrogate the role of these changes on the developmental pathogenesis.