Dr. Katie McLaughlin is a clinical psychologist with expertise in child and adolescent mental health and the Executive Director of the Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health and Knight Chair and Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon. She has a joint Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and Epidemiology from Yale University. Before joining the Ballmer Institute, Dr. McLaughlin was a tenured professor of psychology at the University of Washington and Harvard University. Her research examines how adverse environmental experiences shape emotional, cognitive, and neurobiological development throughout childhood and adolescence. Specifically, Dr. McLaughlin’s work seeks to understand how experiences of stress, trauma, and social disadvantage in childhood alter developmental processes in ways that increase risk for psychopathology. Her research uncovers specific developmental processes that are altered by adverse environmental experiences early in life and that in turn increase risk for mental health problems in children and adolescents and leverages knowledge of these mechanisms to develop interventions to prevent the onset of psychopathology in children who experience adversity. Dr. McLaughlin’s overarching goal is to contribute to greater understanding of the role of environmental experience in shaping children’s development, so as to inform the creation of interventions, practices, and policies to promote adaptive development in society’s most vulnerable members.
Dr. McLaughlin’s Google Scholar profile can be found here: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=nCjcWz0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao