AMYGDALA PTSD CONFERENCE - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Member of the Conference Committee

Job Titles:

• Member of the Conference Committee
• Research Professor of Psychiatry / Scientific Director, Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress

Job Titles:

• Member of the Conference Committee

Job Titles:

• Member of the Conference Committee
• Professor and Vice Chair

David Mears, PhD Professor and Vice Chair for Education, Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Genetics Professor, Graduate Program in Neuroscience Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Job Titles:

• Chairman of the Conference Committee
• Assistant Scientific Director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress
• Co - Chair / Research Associate Professor of Psychiatry

Dr. James A. Naifeh is Research Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Assistant Scientific Director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Following an undergraduate education at the University of Colorado, Dr. Naifeh received his PhD from the University of South Dakota, where he completed the Doctoral Specialty Track in Clinical/Disaster Psychology and served as a Morgan Fellow in the Disaster Mental Health Institute. He completed his clinical internship in the Veterans Affairs Maryland Health Care System and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Dr. Naifeh's research aims to advance understanding of mental health risk and resilience in military personnel through the identification of psychological, environmental, and neurobiological factors associated with suicide, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other adverse health outcomes. He has authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on these topics. He has also served as an investigator on studies funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, Department of Defense, and Department of the Army. Included among these is the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (Army STARRS), the largest epidemiological and neurobiological study of mental health risk and resilience ever conducted in the U.S. military, along with its longitudinal continuation and expansion (STARRS-LS).

Job Titles:

• Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Psychiatry

Dr. Karen J. Parker is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where she leads the Major Laboratories Steering Committee and directs the Social Neurosciences Research Program. The principal goal of her research program is to better understand the biology of social functioning across a range of species, and to translate these fundamental insights to drive diagnostic and treatment advances for patients with social impairments, with a core focus on autism spectrum disorder. Dr. Parker's research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Simons Foundation, and Department of Defense, published in leading scientific journals, and featured across diverse media outlets (e.g., NPR, CBS, New York Times, LA Times, Science, Scientific American). Dr. Parker received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Michigan. She completed postdoctoral training at Stanford University and joined the Stanford faculty thereafter. She is an Affiliate Scientist at the California National Primate Research Center, a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP), and a Kavli Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. She has attended key opinion leader meetings at the U.S. National Academies and NIH, and held leadership roles on international research advisory committees for the Society for Neuroscience and ACNP. Dr. Parker was born in Boulder, CO and raised in suburban Chicago. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, three children, and two Australian shepherds.

Job Titles:

• Physician

Dr. Sandro Galea, a physician, epidemiologist, and author, is dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at Boston University School of Public Health. In 2015, he became dean of Boston University School of Public Health. One of the most widely-cited scholars in the social sciences, Galea has published more than 1000 scientific journal articles, 75 chapters, and 24 books. He has published extensively in the peer-reviewed literature about the social causes of health, mental health, and trauma. He has documented the consequences of mass trauma and conflict worldwide, including the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa, and the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His research has been principally funded by the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and philanthropic foundations. He is past chair of the board of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health and past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. He formerly served as chair of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's Community Services Board and as member of its Health Board. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. He currently serves as Chair of the Boston Public Health Commission Board of Health, and he is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Galea has received several lifetime achievement awards for his research, including the Rema Lapouse Award from the American Public Health Association and the Robert S. Laufer, PhD, Memorial Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. He is a regular contributor to media, including The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Boston Globe, TEDMED, and The New York Times. Galea was born in Malta and emigrated to Canada with his family at the age of 14. After receiving his medical degree, Galea worked in Somalia with Doctors Without Borders before attending graduate school in the United States. Galea holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto, graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow. Prior to his appointment at Boston University, Galea served as the Gelman Professor and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. He previously held academic and leadership positions at the University of Michigan and at the New York Academy of Medicine.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Conference Committee
• Research Assistant, Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress / Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Job Titles:

• Chairman of the Conference Committee
• Co - Chair / Research Associate Professor of Psychiatry

Job Titles:

• Member of the Conference Committee
• Professor and Director of Research, Department of Family Medicine
 Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Job Titles:

• Member of the Conference Committee

Job Titles:

• Member of the Conference Committee
• Scientific Coordinator / Associate Professor of Psychiatry

Job Titles:

• Professor of Science at New York University

Job Titles:

• Member of the Conference Committee
• Research Assistant, Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress / Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Job Titles:

• Member of the Conference Committee
• Study Coordinator, Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress / Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Job Titles:

• Member of the Conference Committee
• Continuing Education Coordinator / Research Assistant Professor of Psychiatry

Job Titles:

• Professor at Boston University School of Public Health

Job Titles:

• Professor of Psychiatry

Dr. Leanne Williams is the inaugural Vincent V.C. Woo Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Associate Chair of Translational Neuroscience at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is the founding director of the Stanford Center for Precision Mental Health and Wellness and of the Stanford PanLab for Personalized and Translational Neuroscience. She holds a joint appointment as Director of the Precision Medicine Core at the Palo Alto VA Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center. Prior to joining the Stanford community, Dr. Williams was the Professor of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry and Director of the Brain Dynamics Center at Sydney Medical School. Her PhD was completed with a British Council Scholarship for study at Oxford University. She has developed a precision neuroscience approach for application in psychiatry. This approach is grounded in a taxonomy of biotypes for depression and anxiety and a new image processing system to quantify these biotypes. Her research uses biotypes for more individualized diagnosis and for personalizing and tailoring the treatment. She evaluates pharmacotherapies, behavioral interventions, novel selective medicines, neuromodulation, and exploratory therapeutics. To tie together findings across studies, she integrates common neuroimaging, behavioral, and clinical measures. Computational approaches are used to further refine and expand her approach to precision mental health. Dr. Williams' research programs are supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health. She has published the first book on Precision Psychiatry and contributed over 375 scientific papers to the field.