Collaborators

Dr. Arnsten is an international expert on the molecular regulation of higher cortical circuits, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. She received her B.A. in Neuroscience from Brown University in 1976 (where she created the Neuroscience major), and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UCSD in 1981. She did post-doctoral research with Dr. Susan Iversen at Cambridge University in the UK, and with Dr. Patricia Goldman-Rakic at Yale. Dr. Arnsten's research examines the neural basis of higher cognition. Her work has revealed that the newly evolved cortical circuits that underlie higher cognition are uniquely regulated at the molecular level, conferring vulnerability in mental illness and age-related cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's Disease. Arnsten's research has led to new treatments for cognitive disorders in humans, including the successful translation of guanfacine (IntunivTM) for the treatment of ADHD and related prefrontal cortical disorders.

Dr. Jennifer Blackburn received her PhD from the Medway School of Pharmacy at the Universities of Kent and Greenwich in 2017. Her research focuses on the role of immune activation and inflammation in the response to therapeutic and recreational drugs. Currently she is studying the cell-type specific mechanisms underpinning cannabis anti-inflammatory effects and how HIV-infection impacts cannabis’s effect on the immune system.

Dr. Hilary Patricia Blumberg is the John and Hope Furth Professor of Psychiatric Neuroscience, Professor of Psychiatry, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and in the Child Center, and Director of the Mood Disorders Research Program, at the Yale School of Medicine. She graduated summa cum laude in neuroscience from Harvard University and completed her medical degree, psychiatry training and specialty training in brain scanning research at Cornell University Medical College. Dr. Blumberg’s research is devoted to understanding the brain circuitry differences that underlie mood disorders across the lifespan, with a focus on bipolar disorder and on suicide prevention. She directs the Mood Disorders Research Program at Yale that brings together a multi-disciplinary group of scientists to study the genetic, developmental and environmental factors that cause mood disorders to develop new methods for early detection, more effective interventions, and prevention of the disorders and their associated high risk for suicide. This research includes the use of new state-of-the-art brain scanning methods. The program is also known for training young scientists to be new leaders in the field. Dr. Blumberg has served as principal investigator on awards from the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Department of Veterans Affairs, BD2, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, International Bipolar Disorder Foundation, For the Love of Travis Foundation, MQ Foundation, Stanley Medical Research Institute and Women’s Health Research at Yale. She has received numerous awards including the 2021 International Society of Bipolar Disorders Mogens Schou Award for Research in Bipolar Disorder, 2021 Sethi Award, 2018 American Psychiatric Association Blanche F. Ittleson Award for outstanding and published research in child and adolescent psychiatry and 2017 Brain and Behavior Foundation Colvin Prize for Research Achievement in Mood Disorders. She is a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and a member of the Society of Biological Psychiatry.

I have been involved in Patient-Oriented Research in the field of Childhood Obesity and Type 2 diabetes (T2D) in youth for the past 25 years. Realizing the need to understand the pathophysiology and to find better treatments for  T2D in Obese Youth,  I have been investigating the role of insulin resistance and beta-cell dysfunction at the earliest stage of T2D, namely Impaired Glucose Tolerance (IGT).  My research in pre-diabetes in obese children and adolescents has brought into focus at the national level the magnitude of the obesity problem in children in the US. This research demonstrated a much faster tempo of progression of beta-cell failure in obese adolescents, which helped to stimulate the funding of two NIDDK RCTs in obese youth; The TODAY and RISE studies. In recognition of the importance of this work, in 2008 Dr. Caprio was awarded the prestigious “Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award (DCSA)” from the American Diabetes Association. Her research spans both clinical and basic research in metabolism, genetics, and imaging and is the recipient of the “Distinguished Leader in Insulin Resistance” 2015 Award from the International Committee for Insulin Resistance (ICIR). Over the past decade, our group has assembled two large multiethnic cohorts of children/adolescents cohorts: The Pathogenesis of Youth Onset Diabetes (PYOD) study (NCT01967849), (R01HD040787, R01DK111038), and The Yale Pediatric NAFLD/NASH Cohort  (NCT01966627), which served as the vehicle for a series of studies aimed at investigating the roles of insulin resistance, beta-cell dysfunction and NAFLD in the earliest stage of T2D: Impaired Glucose Tolerance (IGT).

Richard E. Carson received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1983 in Biomathematics. From that time on, he has focused his research on the development and application of mathematical techniques for the study of human beings and non-human primates with Positron Emission Tomography (PET), a noninvasive imaging technology that uses radiopharmaceuticals to trace in vivo physiology and pharmacology. From 1983 until 2005, Dr. Carson was an integral part of the PET program at the National Institutes of Health, rising to the rank of Senior Scientist. In 2005, Dr. Carson joined the faculty of Yale University as Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Diagnostic Radiology. He was Director of the Yale PET Center from 2007 to 2022, a state-of-the-art facility focused on quantitative PET techniques using novel radiopharmaceuticals. Dr. Carson is also Director of Graduate Studies in Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Carson’s research interests are concentrated in the following areas: 1) Ultra-high resolution brain PET systems and algorithms for image reconstruction with PET, 2) Development of mathematical models for novel radiopharmaceuticals to produce images of physiological parameters, 3) Use of receptor-binding ligands to measure drug occupancy and dynamic changes in neurotransmitters by analysis of PET tracer signals, and 4) applications of PET tracers in clinical populations and preclinical models of disease. Dr. Carson has published over 400 papers in peer-reviewed journals, given over 200 invited lectures and is a member of the editorial board of two of the leading journals in the field of brain PET, the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, and the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism. Dr. Carson was awarded the Kuhl-Lassen award from the Brain Imaging Council of the Society of Nuclear Medicine in 2007. He became a member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2008 and was awarded the Sheffield Distinguished Teaching Award from the Yale School of Engineering. In 2009, he was named the winner of the Ed Hoffman Memorial Award from the Computer and Instrumentation Council of the Society of Nuclear Medicine. In 2010, Dr. Carson was named as a member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. In 2016, Dr. Carson was given the Distinguished Investigator Award from the Academy of Radiology Research. In 2017, Dr. Carson received the Edward J. Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist Award from the IEEE. In 2018, Dr. Carson gave the Henry N. Wagner Jr. Lectureship at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging annual meeting in Philadelphia. In 2019, Dr. Carson was named as a Fellow of the IEEE. In 2023, Dr. Carson received the Yale University Graduate Mentor Award. In 2024, Dr. Carson received the Image of the Year award at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging annual meeting and the 2024 IEEE Marie Skłodowska-Curie Award sponsored by the IEEE Nuclear & Plasma Sciences Society.

Dr. Constable received his PhD in Medical Physics from the University of Toronto. He came to Yale as a postdoctoral fellow and has been here since. In addition to being the director of MRI in the Yale Magnetic Resonance Research Center, he runs two parallel labs. One lab is a neuroscience lab focused on mapping the functional organization of the brain through functional MRI measurements and understanding the relationship between this functional organization and behavior. Such developments are leading to new approaches to functionally phenotype individuals with applications in subtyping in brain disorders and disease. Dr. Constable's other lab is focused on the development of novel MRI devices with projects around low field MRI's that can be placed in doctor's offices, with the potential to make MRI much more accessible than it is in it's current form.

Amanda M. Dettmer, PhD, is a Research Scientist at the Yale Child Study Center, where she leads the Human and Animal Integrated Research (HAIR) Lab. She is a comparative psychologist and behavioral neuroscientist with over 20 years of experience studying nonhuman primate models of child health and development. Dr. Dettmer's research program examines the impact of early life factors and individual differences on health across the lifespan. For this research, she takes a comparative approach: she relies on nonhuman primates as translational models for human child development, employing multidisciplinary approaches including ethology, neuroendocrinology, immunology, and epigenetics. This line of Dr. Dettmer's research has been funded by the Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center (OAIC) at Yale School of Medicine, the Animal Models for the Social Dimensions of Health & Aging Research Network (NIH/NIA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and Yale Child Study Center Junior Faculty Development Fund. For more on this research, refer to Dr. Dettmer's complete Google Scholar profile. Dr. Dettmer also works with human populations. She recently served as a member of the Hartford City Council Universal Basic Income (UBI) Task Force to develop a pilot UBI program. She is also Co-PI of a research study funded by the Prepared Adult Initiative examining chronic stress across the school year in children in grades 1-8 as a function of school/educational setting. A third line of research focuses on analyzing the educational, therapeutic, and financial impacts of intensive in-school mental health services provided to K-12 students, in partnership with Effective School Solutions. Dr. Dettmer is the Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Developmental Psychobiology and is the Past-President of Division 6 of the American Psychological Association (APA), the Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology. She serves as the APA Division 6 representative to the Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education. Dr. Dettmer was the 2017-18 APA Executive Branch Science Fellow, during which she worked at the National Center for Education Research at the Institute of Education Sciences, the independent research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. Dr. Dettmer also served as the Chair of the Governing Council of Carroll Creek Montessori Public Charter School in Frederick, MD from 2016-18. In this position, she oversaw the governance of the school and maintained strong relationships with and regular reporting to the local county board of education. Consequently, Dr. Dettmer maintains an active interest in education research, with a focus on the educational environment and educational experience as an understudied early life experience. Before her fellowship, Dr. Dettmer worked as a senior postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at NIH. There she led several research programs aimed at identifying the causes and consequences of long-term stress in nonhuman primate models of child development. Dr. Dettmer previously served on the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Committee on Animals in Research and as Executive Secretary of the American Society of Primatologists from 2016-18. Dr. Dettmer earned her BS in zoology from the University of Washington in Seattle, and her MS (2007) and PhD (2009) in behavioral neuroscience from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Dr. Grilo is an internationally-recognized expert on eating disorders, obesity, and manifestations of disordered eating. His secondary clinical-research interests include psychopathology, personality disorders, addictions, and the sociocultural contexts of functioning. Dr. Grilo’s current work focuses on performing controlled treatment studies testing behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, guided-self-help scalable treatments, and pharmacological interventions for eating/weight disorders in diverse patient groups/settings, including bariatric surgery. Dr. Grilo’s current RCTs include adaptive “SMART” stepped-care designs for binge-eating disorder and obesity. His current collaborative work is interdisciplinary, integrating laboratory and neurobiological methods, extending across diverse settings and patient groups, and includes epidemiological and longitudinal outcome studies, with an increasing emphasis on health disparities and stigma. Dr. Grilo has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for 30 years and has served as Principal Investigator on 20 NIH grants. Dr. Grilo received two K24 Mid-Career Investigator Awards in Eating/Weight Disorders from the NIH/NIDDK, which reflect his longstanding commitment to training and mentoring and in collaborative clinical-research activities. Dr. Grilo’s involvement with the psychology training program dates back to 1993-2000, when he coordinated the pre-doctoral internship and postdoctoral training programs at the Yale Psychiatric Institute while serving as Director of Psychology. Dr. Grilo currently serves on the editorial boards of 10 professional journals, including the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology and the American Psychologist. Dr. Grilo has published over 510 peer-reviewed journal articles (“h” index of 90 with over 29,500 citations on SCOPUS; "discipline-H" index of 119 with 45,800 citations on Research.com), 25 chapters, and two books on eating and weight disorders. In his capacity as Director of POWER, Dr. Grilo provides leadership of this entirely grant-funded clinical-research and training program focused on eating/weight disorders. POWER provides research training to students/trainees (undergraduate, graduate, pre-doctoral, post-doctoral, and junior faculty levels) with interests in academic careers; the primary focus is on post-doctoral training.

Sarah Lowe, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health, with secondary appointments in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and Yale School of Nursing. Her research focuses on the long-term mental health consequences of a range of potentially traumatic events, as well as the impact of such events on other domains of functioning, such as physical health, social relationships, and economic wellbeing. Her work explores the mechanisms leading from trauma exposure to symptoms, and the role of factors at various ecological levels – from genetics to neighborhoods – in shaping risk and resilience. She uses a range of methodologies to achieve her research aims, including structural equation modeling, latent growth curve analysis, geospatial modeling, and qualitative analysis, among others.  Dr. Lowe received her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Boston and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Psychiatric Epidemiology Training program at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Professor Monin’s research examines how emotional processes affect health in older adult relationships. Her research combines survey methods and laboratory experiments to understand the mechanisms (e.g. emotional contagion, cardiovascular reactivity) and moderators (gender, individual differences in attachment) involved in these processes. Currently her research focuses on understanding how caregivers and care recipients support one another in the context of early stage dementia.

Dr. Potenza is a board-certified psychiatrist with sub-specialty training and certification in addiction psychiatry. He has trained at Yale University receiving a combined BS/MS with Honors in Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics and a PhD in Cell Biology, the latter concurrent with the MD through the Medical Scientist Training Program. He completed internship, psychiatric residency and addiction psychiatry fellowship training at Yale. Currently, he is a Professor of Psychiatry, Child Study and Neuroscience at the Yale University School of Medicine where he is Director of the Division on Addictions Research at Yale, the Center of Excellence in Gambling Research, the Yale Research Program on Impulsivity and Impulse Control Disorders, and the Women and Addictive Disorders Core of Women's Health Research at Yale. He is also a Senior Scientist at the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling. He is on the editorial boards of fifteen journals (including editor-in-chief of Current Addiction Reports) and has received multiple national and international awards for excellence in research and clinical care.  He has consulted to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Registry of Effective Programs, National Institutes of Health, American Psychiatric Association and World Health Organization on matters of addiction.

Mary Savoye-DeSanti, MS, RD, CD-N, CDE is a leading authority in the fields of obesity and diabetes in her clinical and research capacity at Yale University. She is the associate director of pediatric obesity at the School of Medicine and clinical dietitian at the Yale Stress Center. With 20 years of experience, she has published several research articles and chapters in textbooks. She has recently published the 1 Thing “Diet”: It doesn’t Get Any Simpler. In addition to this stress-free approach to weight loss, she has written the Smart Moves Workbook, a weight management curriculum for both children and adults. She developed the Bright Bodies Healthy Lifestyle Program for overweight children and their parents and it is used throughout the world. Ms. Savoye-DeSanti has earned two undergraduate degrees—one in nutrition and dietetics and one in business administration—and an MS degree in clinical mental health counseling. She lives in Branford, Connecticut, with her husband and three children.

Dustin Scheinost, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, Biomedical Engineering, Statistics & Data Science, and at the Yale Child Study Center. The Multi-modal Imaging, Neuroinformatics, & Data Science (MINDS) Lab’s research is three-fold. First, using state-of-the-art research for connectomics, we aim to develop novel statistical and machine learning methods for functional connectivity to meet challenges arising with the “big” neuroscience data. Second, the MINDS lab helps lead development of BioImage Suite Web (BISWeb; https://bioimagesuiteweb.github.io/webapp/), integrated image analysis webapp. Third, we are at the cutting edge of early life neuroimaging, focusing on the development of the brain’s functional organization in fetuses, neonates, and infants. We are a founding member of Fetal, Infant, Toddler Neuroimaging Group (FIT’NG). This research has been supported by NIMH, NIAA, NIDA, and NHLBI.

Dr. Wendy Silverman is the Alfred A. Messer Professor of Child Psychiatry and Director of the Yale Child Study Center Anxiety and Mood Disorders Program, and Professor of Psychology. Dr. Silverman’s research focuses on the development/maintenance of anxiety and mood disorders and developing/testing treatments to alleviate them.  She has published widely in the field and has served as principal investigator/co-investigator of many National Institute of Health research grants.  She has contributed to the profession by serving as Chairperson and member of federal grant review panels, and as Associate Editor and Editor of major scientific journals in clinical psychology. Dr. Silverman has been recognized for her mentoring including being a past recipient of a NIMH midcareer research-mentoring award.

I am a psychologist and neuroscientist with graduate degrees in Neuroscience and Clinical Psychology from McGill University.  My research focuses on understanding how sensory, metabolic and neural signals are integrated to determine food choices and on how the dysregulation of these systems contribute to the development of obesity, diabetes and cognitive impairment. My group primarily uses neuroimaging, neuropsychological and metabolic methodologies in humans; however, we also have collaborations with a number of basic research labs at Yale and abroad where we use a revere translational approach to pursue mechanistic questions in rodent models that arise from findings in humans.  My laboratory generally consists of 1-2 phd students; 3-4 post-docs; a research associate professor and a handful of international interns and Yale undergraduates. I have trained 5 PhD students, 12 post-doctoral fellows and over 40 undergraduates and medical students. The  lab has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 2003.In addition to my activities at Yale, I am also involved in a number of initiatives related to advancing knowledge and treatment of diabetes and obesity. I am co-leading a National Institutes of Health workgroup developing a neuropsychological battery for use in obesity and diabetes trials and chairing the annual meeting for the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior. I am executive editor at Appetite and Biological Psychiatry and a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Behavior, Cognitive and Sensory Sciences.