No Milestones Met: The academic developmental history of an elderly academic

Kicking off the symposium will be Prof. Terry L. Jernigan (University of California San Diego), who has contributed to human brain imaging research for over 30 years, using MRI to study brain development and aging in both healthy and diseased states. She will use her vast experience in neurodevelopmental research to map her career’s “developmental history” and will debunk the idea that traditional milestones need to be met to reach success in academia.

Dr. Jernigan is Professor of Cognitive Science, Psychiatry, and Radiology, and Director, Center for Human Development at the University of California, San Diego. For over 30 years, she has studied the human brain using noninvasive imaging. This work has focused on brain development and aging, neurodevelopmental disorders, neuropsychiatric and substance use disorders, and neurodegenerative disorders. For the last decade her central research interest has been the developing human mind and brain, with a focus on the dynamic neurodevelopmental processes that give rise to human individuality—and on how these processes are affected by experience, substance exposure, genetic variation, and other factors. She is Co-Director of the Coordinating Center for the ABCD Study. She has served on the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse, the Council of Councils of the National Institutes of Health, and she currently serves on the NIH “Helping End Addiction Long Term” (HEAL) Multidisciplinary Workgroup, as well as scientific advisory boards of several research organizations in the United States and Europe.

Luck is not Random and other reflections on becoming a scientist

Dr. Xavier Castellanos is the winner of the 2020 OHBM Mentor Award!

Dr. Castellanos studied Chomskian linguistics at Vassar College, experimental psychology at the University of New Orleans, and medicine at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. He was in the first cohort of “triple board” residents (combined training in pediatrics, psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry) at the University of Kentucky, after which he spent a decade conducting child psychiatry research at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda. In 2001 he moved to New York University, where he is endowed professor of child and adolescent psychiatry, professor of radiology, neuroscience and physiology and an affiliate member of the NYU department of psychology.

His work has focused on using brain imaging to better understand neurodevelopmental disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. He was an early advocate of examining low-frequency fluctuations in brain function and in behavior – both of which have become mainstream lines of investigation. Listed by Thomson Reuters (now Clarivate Analytics) as one the top 1% cited scientists in psychiatric neuroscience since 2014, he has served on many national and international review committees and was Vice-Chair of the American Psychiatric Association DSM-5 Workgroup on ADHD. 

Navigating the Emotional Ups and Downs of Academia

 Dr. Erin Barker (University of Concordia) will wrap up the series of talks to help attendees reflect on the emotional ups and downs of academia. She will use her expertise in stress, coping, and well-being to share how we can tap into the strengths of our emotion regulation capacity to promote emotional well-being in the face of challenging circumstances.

Dr. Erin Barker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and member of the Centre for Research in Human Development at Concordia University, where she directs the “Lifespan Well-Being Laboratory.”  She is a developmental scientist whose program of research examines patterns of emotional experience across developmental transitions. She is particularly interested in how stress and coping affect mental health and wellbeing during the transition to adulthood. Dr. Barker completed her training at the Universities of Victoria (M.A.) and Alberta (Ph.D.) and as a postdoctoral fellow at the Child and Family Research Section of the NICHD and the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.