Residents

PGY-2

Jon Carlson, M.D., University of Colorado Health Sciences Center
Kyle Williams, M.D., University of Minnesota

PGY-3

Rebecca Hommer, M.D., University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Tamara Vanderwal, M.D., Yale University School of Medicine

PGY-4

Thomas Fernandez, M.D., Yale University School of Medicine
Alexander Westphal, M.D., Brown University School of Medicine

PGY-5

Michael Bloch, M.D., Yale University School of Medicine
Hanna Stevens, M.D., Ph.D., University of Illinois College of Medicine

Research Trainees

Roger Jou, M.D., M.P.H., University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Ellen Hoffman, M.D., Mt. Sinai School of Medicine

Michael H. Bloch, M.D. (entered in 2004): Michael graduated from Yale Medical School after receiving a B. A. degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in biology. During his years at Yale, Michael conducted a thesis project assessing Predictors of Future Tic and OCD severity on MRI in children with Tourette syndrome (TS) under the mentorship of Dr. James Leckman and Dr. Bradley Peterson. The thesis project fostered a lifelong passion in child psychiatry and clinical research. Dr. Bloch is continuing his research in the area of Tourette syndrome and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder mentored by Dr. James Leckman. Michael is currently conducting a study of childhood clinical, neuropsychological and neuroimaging predictors of long-term outcome in Tourette syndrome and OCD. Michael found that reduced caudate volume and poor performance on the Purdue Pegboard task in children with TS were predictive of increased adulthood tic severity. Increased IQ and reduced caudate volume in children with TS were predictive of increased adulthood obsessive-compulsive symptom severity. While on the training grant, he has published three manuscripts about TS cohort. He is currently working on the results of adult-outcome in the cohort with pediatric-onset OCD and received an AACAP Pilot Research Grant to support this work. Michael is also pursuing an advanced M.S. degree at the School of Public Health at Yale and working with Dr. Vladimir Coric at the adult OCD clinic of the Connecticut Mental Health Center. Through a combination of his experience at these two institutions he recently completed a series of systematic reviews one of which was on antipsychotic augmentation therapy for treatment-refractory OCD that was published in Molecular Psychiatry. A second systematic review of Behavioral and Pharmacological Treatments for trichotillomania was published in Biological Psychiatry. Last year he received an APA/Janssen Resident Research Award to conduct further systematic reviews in psychiatry. This coming year he will be funded in part by a Lilly Psychiatric Research Fellowship from the American Psychiatric Association.

Jon Carlson, M.D. (entered in 2007): Dr. Carlson is a 2007 graduate of the University of Colorado. Prior to entering medical school Dr. Carlson served as a research assistant for Martin Reite, MD. Publications from this period continue to appear in the scientific literature. He also received a NIH short-term grant with Angeles Ribera, Ph.D., to develop tools and protocols for the examination of neural circuit function in zebrafish embryos. In his last years of medical school he has also worked with Drs. Randy Ross and Sharon Hunt at Colorado to study early brain development. During his time at Yale Dr. Carlson plans to pursue his interest in psychotic children and the schizophrenia prodrome. More recently, he matriculated into Yale’s Investigative Medicine Program (IMP). The IMP is a PhD program for physician-scientists and is specifically designed for residents and fellows in training at Yale-New Haven Medical Center. Jon is now one of four Solnit trainees in this innovative program. He is presently in the midst of deciding on a research mentor here at Yale.

Thomas V. Fernandez, M.D. (entered 2005): Prior to medical school, Tom worked in the Child Psychiatry Branch of NIMH and developed a specific interest in the genetic influences of childhood psychiatric disorders. At present, Dr. Fernandez is a fourth-year resident in the Integrated Child and Adult Psychiatry Research Training Program. Thomas has conducted his research in the area of genetics of child psychiatric disorders, mentored by Dr. Matthew State. He is currently conducting two genetic association studies examining several promising candidate genes for autism and Tourette syndrome (TS). In addition, he is examining gene copy number variation and using parametric linkage analysis to study a unique sample of children with chronic motor stereotypies (CMS). This work seeks to identify specific genes contributing to neural circuit dysfunction which will lead to a better understanding of the unique and shared features of CMS and TS. While on the training grant, he has co-authored an original chapter providing an overview of approaches to gene discovery in child psychiatric genetics for Lewis’ Textbook of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 4th Edition. He was selected for the AACAP Educational Outreach Program as well as the Donald J. Cohen Fellowship Program for International Scholars in Child & Adolescent Mental Health in 2007. Tom is also pursuing advanced coursework in genetic epidemiology and biostatistics through the Yale School of Public Health.

Ellen Hoffman, M.D. (to enter July 2008): Dr. Hoffman graduated with an M.D. with Recognition in Research degree from Stony Brook University School of Medicine. She was awarded an Alpha Omega Alpha Student Research Fellowship for her project in the laboratory of Dr. Gail Mandel of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Neurobiology at Stony Brook. This project involved studying a transcriptional repressor protein that plays a key role in neuronal differentiation. During her child psychiatry fellowship, psychiatry residency, and in medical school, she has continued to be involved in basic science research projects studying nervous system development. She has received numerous awards including the American Psychiatric Institute/Janssen Psychiatric Research Scholar Award and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry/Eli Lilly Pilot Research Award, which is supporting an independent research project in the molecular genetics of autism that she is conducting in the laboratory of Dr. Joseph Buxbaum of the Department of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai. The goal of this project is to identify polymorphisms in genes that are involved in the oxytocin signaling system in autistic patients, as there is evidence that dysregulation of this system is related to deficits in social behavior. In addition, by examining whether any identified polymorphisms are associated with behavior patterns (e.g. communication or social deficits), this project seeks to relate particular clinical presentations and specific gene variants. One of her main research goals is to utilize a basic neurobiology approach in order to understand the mechanisms that may contribute to developmental disorders, such as the autism spectrum disorders. She will be working primarily in the Laboratory of Dr. Flora Vaccarino.

Rebecca Hommer, M.D. (entered 2006): As an undergraduate at Brandeis University, Rebecca studied history and wrote her honors thesis on the evolution of children’s literature during the depression and WWII. After college, Rebecca spent three years at the NIH studying infant macaque behavior and mother-infant attachment. As a research assistant, she designed and organized a neuroimaging study examining the effects of rearing condition on macaque brain development. Although baby monkeys bear a remarkable resemblance to young primates of the human sort, Rebecca eventually decided that she could make more of a difference working with members of her own species, and she left the lab to attend medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. Following her third year of medical school, Rebecca was accepted into the NIH’s Clinical Research Training Program. She joined the Pediatric and Developmental Neuropsychiatry branch of the NIMH where she spent a year working with children with bipolar disorder and mood dysregulation and undertook a research project using fMRI techniques to study the development of motor inhibition. Dr. Hommer is now a third-year resident in the Albert J. Solnit Integrated Child and Adult Psychiatry Research Training Program. Rebecca’s clinical work includes the Yale Child Study Center’s early childhood assessment clinic, the Minding the Baby program, and the Connecticut Mental Health Center’s obsessive-compulsive disorder and first break psychosis (STEP) clinics. Rebecca is working on several projects under the mentorship of Dr. Linda Mayes, including studies of young children’s learning, adolescent stress reactivity, and the outcomes of mother-infant dyads involved in an intensive nursing home intervention program. In addition, Rebecca is developing computer-based task paradigms employing salient infant cues to study the relationship between distress tolerance and maternal competence. She also hopes to begin a study of the effects of acute and chronic stress on adolescent decision making and temporal discounting. Rebecca is pursuing advanced coursework in health policy and biostatistics through the Yale School of Epidemiology and Public Health. Rebecca was recently named a 2008-2009 APA/Shire Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellow and awarded travel grants to attend the 2008 and 2009 annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association.

Roger Jou, M.D., M.P.H. (to enter July 2008): Dr. Jou has displayed a steady in interest in disorders on the autism spectrum (ASDs). Initially as a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh, his research in ASDs focused on psychopharmacology (topiramate, quetiapine, and atomoxetine) in treating secondary symptoms. This interest soon shifted to neuroimaging where he trained under the supervision of Antonio Hardan, MD, and Matcheri Keshavan, MD. His initial work investigated differences in cerebral cortical folding using structural MRI techniques. As a second-year resident in psychiatry at Yale, he began working with Robert Schultz, PhD, in the Yale Developmental Neuroimaging Laboratory where he developed an interest in diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and functional MRI (fMRI). As a third-year resident, he matriculated into Yale’s Investigative Medicine PhD program for physician-scientists and is specifically designed for residents and fellows in training at Yale-New Haven Medical Center. Dr. Jou’s thesis title is, “Characterization of Abnormal Neural Connectivity in Autism Spectrum Disorders using Combinatory Magnetic Resonance Imaging Techniques.” He has preliminary data supporting his thesis and a manuscript accepted (pending revisions) in Psychological Medicine. His thesis work will continue in concert with “Project 4: Neuroimaging” of the Yale Autism Center of Excellence (ACE) project. This coming year he will be funded, in part, by a Lilly Psychiatric Research Fellowship from the American Psychiatric Association.

Hanna Stevens, M.D., Ph.D. (entered in 2004): As a medical and graduate student at the University of Illinois, Hanna conducted research in auditory physiology, looking at the normal processing of speech sound in the auditory nerve of the chinchilla. She also worked on projects focusing on the presentation of restless legs syndrome in children and weight gain in children being treated with atypical antipsychotics. Her main interests are in young child development and sensory processing, both in terms of clinical assessment/treatment and the anatomy and physiology of the brain. Dr. Stevens trained as a physician and auditory neuroscientist in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Medical Scholars Program. Since beginning in the Integrated Residency Program at Yale, she has worked with Flora Vaccarino, retraining with developmental neuroscience skills to understand the mechanisms by which early biological and environmental events effect brain development. She developed these interests in her clinical training experiences both with emotionally disturbed children, many of whom have unknown disruptions in neurobiological development, and with women experiencing psychiatric problems around pregnancy which may affect their children. Dr. Stevens has completed a study of fibroblast growth factor receptor 2 (FGFR2) and the role it plays in the development of the central nervous system of the mouse, presenting these findings at the 2007 Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting and the 2008 International Society for Developmental Neuroscience Conference. She is preparing to publish results showing that knocking-out FGFR2 in neuronal precursors causes a significant reduction in excitatory neurons in medial prefrontal cortex, to a greater extent than in other cortical regions. Her work contributes to understanding how the FGF system plays a role in the mechanisms by which abnormalities arise in the brains of patients with schizophrenia, mental retardation and autism. In order to examine the mechanisms at work in these mice more completely, she established a new mouse line that combines the expression of green fluorescent protein in GABAergic neurons with deficits in fibroblast growth factor receptors. Using this mouse, she has also conducted pilot research on her own independent project, funded by the AACAP/Eli Lilly Pilot Research Award, examining how prenatal stress effects the development of inhibitory neurons known to be critical in establishing the functional systems of the early brain. She has also been active in clinical scholarship with publication of case reports/series, preparation of a review on translational primate models and two manuscripts with the Group for Advancement of Psychiatry, as well as presentations on clinical research investigating prenatal stress at the 2007 APA Annual Meeting and on early parenting interventions at the 2007 AACAP Annual Meeting. Recent awards include: the 2006 AACAP/Eli Lilly Pilot Research Award, Ira R. Levine Award for Clinical Excellence (Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine), 2007-2009 Fellowship with Child Psychiatry Committee (Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry). Finally, she is training in an adult psychiatry clinic, focusing on the biology of women's mental health, particularly post-partum depression. All of these experiences are helping her to develop a broad perspective on young child development and how family systems and neurobiological insults can influence its trajectory. Hanna loves to spend time with her daughter, husband and their two cats and also enjoys gardening, reading, and knitting.

Tamara Vanderwal, M.D. (entered in 2006): Tammy grew up in a small town called Vernon in British Columbia, Canada. She received a BSc. in biology from Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C. She then studied ethics at Yale Divinity School for two years, where her concentration was in theological ethics. She then studied ethics at Yale Divinity School for two years, where her concentration was in theological ethics. She attended Yale for medical school, during which time she worked on an fMRI research project about the self in autism spectrum disorders. Dr. Vanderwal is continuing to work in neuroimaging with Robert T. Schultz, Ph.D., examining the neurofunctional underpinnings for differentiating between self and other. She has developed a paradigm for testing encoding and retrieval of self-referential information in the MRI magnet. In healthy adults, she has demonstrated the social nature of self-referential processing, with a similar network of regions being recruited during tasks that involved self, mother and abstract others. Her study also found that unique deactivations in bilateral temporal poles occurred during self-referential processing when compared with mother-referential processing. The manuscript from this work was recently accepted by Neuroimage. She is working to extend this paradigm for use with individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders, as well as to look at the self-reference effect developmentally in typically developing children. Dr. Vanderwal is also beginning a project that will look at the effects of guanfacine on children physiologically, behaviorally and via dense-array EEG. This work will be done with Drs. Linda Mayes and Lawrence Scahill. In addition, In between (and sometimes during) school, Tammy has spent time in Vietnam, Haiti, Eritrea and Germany. She enjoys running, reading, playing soccer and basketball, rowing and painting.

Alexander Westphal, M.D. (entered in 2005): Alexander grew up mostly in England and in the U.S. After graduating from Bennington College, where he studied writing and classics, he imported and restored old Mercedes for several years, and launched a failed career as a writer. He then completed a postbacc certification at Columbia University and enrolled at Brown Medical School. At Brown he became involved in several projects examining an association between absolute pitch and autism. At present, Alexander is a fourth-year trainee in the Albert J. Solnit Integrated Child and Adult Psychiatry Research Training Program. He is currently collecting data on the use of eye-tracking as an outcome measure in autism spectrum disorders and is developing a research protocol to examine motor priming of visual perception among subjects with autism. He has written pieces for Current Opinions in Psychiatry, the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, FOCUS and Academic Psychiatry. He also co-authored a chapter on diagnostic assessment in Autism Spectrum Disorders in Infancy and Early Childhood, edited by Kasia Chawarska, co-authored a chapter on autism for the third edition of Tasman’s textbook, Psychiatry, and co-authored a chapter for Dulcan’s psychopharmacology text. Last year, Dr. Westphal entered Yale’s Investigative Medicine PhD program for physician-scientists under the mentorship of Ami Klin, PhD, and is the recipient of an NIH loan repayment award. Outside of work, Alexander is interested in reading, the cello, and hummingbirds.

Kyle Williams, M.D. (entered in 2007): Dr. Williams graduated from Carleton College and then spent a year at NIMH working with Drs. Daniel Weinberger and Dennis Murphy before entering the University of Minnesota Medical School. On two occasions received a prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Training Fellowship for Medical Students to study the pathogenesis of Sydenham’s chorea and Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal infections (PANDAS). This is an area of research he hopes to pursue while at Yale. He is currently working with Dr. Leckman on a paper describing the results of a two-year prospective longitudinal study. Early this year Dr. Williams was accepted into Yale’s IMP PhD program for physician-scientists and is specifically designed for residents and fellows in training at Yale-New Haven Medical Center.