Interim director of Child Study Center

Linda C. Mayes, M.D., has been named to lead the Yale Child Study Center as interim director, pending completion of the search for a permanent director to succeed Fred R. Volkmar, M.D., who stepped down in December. Mayes will also serve as physician-in-chief of the YNHH Child Psychiatry service. Mayes, the Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology in the Child Study Center, has for the past seven years served as special advisor to the dean.

Mayes, who received her medical degree from Vanderbilt where she also completed pediatric and neonatology fellowships, joined the center’s faculty in 1985, and established a laboratory for studying infant learning and attention. Subsequently, she developed an electrophysiology laboratory for studies of emotional regulation in children, adolescents, and adults with a special focus on the long-term impact of early adversity on social and emotional development across the lifespan. She is also involved in developing and implementing interventions for children and families in both New Haven and rural settings. Mayes is trained as an adult and child psychoanalyst and coordinates the Anna Freud Centre program at Yale that includes a masters program in developmental neuroscience and psychopathology. Most recently, Mayes holds an appointment as Distinguished Visiting Professor in Psychology at Sewanee: The University of the South where she is developing, with a number of Yale colleagues, a collaborative for Southern Appalachian studies focusing especially on community resilience.