NICHD/The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University
Research Training in Childhood Stress, Trauma, and Resilience
[ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR THE 25-26 TRAINING YEAR - PENDING RENEWAL]
The STAR T32 research training program is an intensive fellowship designed to prepare PhD and MD postdoctoral fellows to conduct cutting-edge, translational, developmentally informed research on childhood stress, trauma and resilience. The STAR T32 program takes a broad approach to stress, adversity, and trauma experienced by children and families and their impact on health outcomes across development, including research on adults with a history of early and later stress/trauma. Fellows emerge as innovative and productive independent investigators through intensive mentorship, foundational didactics, and formulation of an independent STAR research project and grant proposal. Fellows also benefit from activities and career development opportunities offered through the COBRE Center for Stress, Trauma, and Resilience, which provides infrastructure to catalyze the development of early career faculty and includes a Technology, Assessment, Data, and Analysis Core and a Community Collaborative Core.
The program embraces an apprenticeship model where fellows work closely with one of a broad base of exceptional faculty mentors conducting innovative, NIH-funded, translational research in STAR-related areas often involving diverse, marginalized and minoritized populations. Fellows may also receive additional mentorship from a secondary mentor depending on the trainee’s interests and training needs. Foundational didactics include training in research design, grant writing, professional development, and ethical issues in research. Ongoing funded projects take a comprehensive and in-depth approach to the full range of exposures and traumas, which include pre- and post-natal exposure to stress, trauma, and substance use, domestic violence and parenting influences, childhood maltreatment, parental loss, trauma presenting to the emergency department, gun violence, neighborhood violence, peer interactions, as well as poverty and other contextual risk and resilience factors occurring throughout development and into adulthood. Research topics also include a focus on the biological (genomic, epigenomic, metabolic, hormonal, inflammatory mechanisms), social (including virtual and online interactions), and behavioral pathways and mechanisms of risk and resilience for health disparities and consequences of adversity; health behaviors and outcomes including birth outcomes, as well as later behavioral, psychiatric, and other medical conditions; and interventions and community partnerships that are evidence-based and provide services and treatments to those children and families most at risk.
Learn more about the Initiative on Stress, Trauma, and Resilience in the Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior (DPHB).
The Mentors and Leadership planned for the STAR T32 Renewal (if funded)
The program involves a dual mentorship model, where fellows match with a primary mentor in the stress, trauma, and resilience field as well as a secondary mentor to provide additional perspective and training experiences. Learn more about the research and clinical interests for faculty mentors listed below.
STAR T32 Leadership (Also serve as Mentors)
Laura Stroud, PhD, Co-Director, STAR T32, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Audrey R Tyrka, MD, PhD, Co-Director, STAR T32, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Stephanie Parade, PhD, Co-Director, STAR T32, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Nicole R Nugent, PhD, Associate Director, STAR T32, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine
Ernestine G. Jennings, PhD, Associate Director, STAR T32, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Elissa Jelalian, PhD, Associate Director, STAR T32, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Professor of Pediatrics
Mentors
Michael F Armey, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior (Research)
Cynthia Battle, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Beth Bock, PhD, Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Leslie Brick, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Larry K Brown, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Margaret Bublitz, PhD, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Associate Professor of Medicine
Linda L Carpenter, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Mary A Carskadon, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Yovanska Duarte-Velez, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Kate M Guthrie, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Christopher Houck, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Professor of Pediatrics
Daphne Koinis-Mitchell, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and Pediatrics (Research)
Karen Jennings Mathis, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
John McGeary, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Nicole McLaughlin, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Elizabeth McQuaid, PhD, ABPP, Professor of Pediatrics, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Lindsay M Orchowski, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Jessica R. Peters, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Noah S Philip, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Anthony Spirito, PhD, ABPP, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Chrys Vergara-Lopez, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Rena R Wing, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Jennifer C. Wolff, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Clinician Educator
Current Fellows
Erick Fedorenko, PhD
April Highlander, PhD
Katherine Ingram, PhD
Destiny Printz-Pereira, PhD