Our DREAM BIG team
This project joins the efforts of researchers who have been following children and their parents since pregnancy
| Full Name | Affiliation | Role | Links | Bio | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Ashley Wazana | DREAMBIG | Project leader | LDI- Jewish General Hospital Research gate | Dr. Wazana is currently the Principal Investigator of DREAM-BIG. He is a clinician-scientist in the department of psychiatry at the Jewish General Hospital. He was trained as a child psychiatrist at McGill and as an epidemiologist at Columbia University. He is the clinical and research director of an Early Childhood Disorders day hospital at the Jewish General Hospital as well as an investigator in projects at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, at the Douglas Institute of Mental Health and in international collaborations with France, Finland the United States. He currently holds the McGill Chair of Psychiatry's Early Career Researcher Award. He is also faculty in the McGill Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry and is involved in a community-based intervention to prevent maladjustment of Aboriginal youth. He was a member of the Consensus Panel which developed the AACAP's recent conflict of interest guidelines. He is currently the chair of the Research and Scientific Program committee of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. |
 | Celia Greenwood | McGill Faculty of Medicine | Senior Investigator | McGill University Loop | Dr. Celia Greenwood is currently the Senior Investigator at the Lady Davis Institute & Professor at McGill University. She is a statistical geneticist with over 140 peer-reviewed publications, including many methodologic developments for analysis of genetic and genomic data, as well as collaborative research contributing to understanding the genetic and genomic contributions to disease in many domains. Notably she co-led the Statistics group of the UK10K study (www.uk10k.org), one of the very first large DNA sequencing studies, and in 2017, co-authored a Nature Reviews Genetics article on the genetic architecture of complex traits. She is President-Elect of the International Genetic Epidemiology Society (2018 – 2020) and co-Director of the Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics and Mental Health. |
 | Jonathan Evans | Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences | Professor | University of Bristol ResearchGate | Dr. Evans current position is at the University of Glasgow, where he is Programme Director for the MSc in Clinical Neuropsychology. His main areas of research interest are the epidemiology of depression, with a particular focus on maternal depression and it's impact and treatment. His other research interests are fathers' mental health, and the intergenerational transmission of depression. |
 | Roberto Sassi | McMaster University | Associate Professor | McMaster University Research Gate | Dr. Sassi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioural Neurosciences and is an attending psychiatrist at the Child Psychiatry division, Hamilton Health Sciences, and at the Mood Disorders Outpatient Program, St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. His medical training was completed in São Paulo, followed by residencies in adult psychiatry in São Paulo and in both adult and child & adolescent psychiatry at Harvard University. Dr. Sassi also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroimaging at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, working on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) investigations on bipolar disorder. Dr. Sassi’s research interests include: understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mood disorders in children and adolescents and possible early interventions in these populations; and the multigenerational transmission of risk for psychopathology, specifically with a focus on the interplay of environmental and genetic factors. |
 | Michael Meaney | Professor | McGill University | The Douglas Research Centre Google Scholar | Dr. Meaney is a James McGill Professor of Medicine at Douglas Mental health University Institute of McGill University. He is the Director of the Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability and Neurodevelopment Project. Meaney also joined the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences in 2008 as a Senior Investigator and leads the Integrative Neuroscience Program. Meaney’s primary research interest is that of the stable effects of early experience on gene expression and development, focusing on the influence of variations in maternal care. These studies have led to the discovery of novel epigenetic mechanisms for the influence of early experience. Meaney’s research is multidisciplinary and includes studies of behaviour and physiology, to molecular biology and genetics. He has authored over 375 journal articles and is credited with launching the fusion of epigenetics and neuroscience. His highly original and innovative research used rodent models to measure how variations in early social conditions, especially maternal care, led to changes in the transcription of specific genes that regulate adult stress responses and synaptic plasticity. |
 | Bruce Morton | Western University | Professor | UWO The Brain and Mind Institute Research Gate | Dr. Morton has served as a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario since 2002 and is now a faculty member of the Graduate Programme in Neuroscience. Dr. Morton’s research interests concern the development of cognitive control and its association with changes in prefrontal cortex function. Research in Dr. Morton's Laboratory aims to associate developmental and intra-individual variation in self-regulatory abilities in early childhood with various experiential and constitutional influences that are at play in the lives of normally developing children. The long-term objective is a comprehensive understanding of how genetic and experiential factors interact in the development cognitive and behavioral self-regulation. |
 | Tim Oberlander | Human Early Learning Partnership | Professor | UBC Human Early Learning Partnership Research Gate | Dr. Oberlander is a physician-scientist whose work bridges developmental neurosciences and community child health. As a clinician he manages pain in children with developmental disabilities. As a researcher, his primary interest has been in studying how early life experiences shape stress/pain and related neurobehavioral outcomes during childhood. Dr. Oberlander’s work extends from molecular/genetic studies to population epidemiological studies that characterize neurodevelopmental pathways that reflect risk, resiliency and developmental plasticity. To this end, he has published pioneering studies on neurobehavioral outcomes in young children of depressed mothers who were treated with an SSRI antidepressant during pregnancy. |
 | Noriyeh Rahbari | DREAM-BIG | Senior Research Associate | Research Gate | Dr. Rahbari is a Research Associate in the Department of Child Psychiatry Jewish General Hospital. Her research interests are focused on the biological, environmental, and social factors that shape children’s cognitive and language developmental trajectories. She is currently working on a project investigating the adverse effect of pre- and postnatal environment on early childhood cognitive and language development as well as long term effects on children’s literacy and education. She is also working on a research project focused on the quality assurance of the day treatment program and children’s response to the treatment in the Department of Child Psychiatry at the Jewish General Hospital. Previously, she worked on the longitudinal evaluation of the PATHS (Promoting of Alternative Thinking Strategies) intervention program on children’s social-emotional learning across several provinces in Canada. Noriyeh completed her Doctoral Degree in Developmental Psychology at Carleton University. |
 | Rebecca Pearson | Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences | Professor | Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences Research Gate | Dr. Pearson's objectives are to understand the mechanisms underlying the intergenerational transmission of depression and to translate this into preventative interventions. In order to investigate this area she takes a multidisciplinary approach combining detailed neuro-psychological investigations with large scale epidemiological studies and health care research. |
 | Henning Tiemeier | Chair of Maternal and Child Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health | Professor and Chair | Harvard School of Public Health Research Gate | Dr. Tiemeier is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher (General Social Science) who has published extensively on the etiology of child developmental problems with a particular focus on prenatal exposures. Most of his research was performed in population-based cohort studies and his work often takes a neurodevelopmental approach. He is a principal investigator of the Generation R Study, a large pre-birth cohort in Rotterdam, that enrolled nearly 10,000 mothers and their children. Ongoing research projects and interests focus on genetic and early life exposures; as his previous work showed that this shapes the vulnerability to neurodevelopmental problems. His recent studies investigate children’s vulnerability to develop eating and sleep problems. Other studies highlight methodological problems in child psychiatric research using multi-informant assessments. Studies examining how parenting and other environmental risk factors relate to brain development as assessed by brain imaging are ongoing. |
 | Anthony David | UCL Institute of Mental Health | Professor of Mental Health Director & Sackler Chair | UCL Institute of Mental Health Research Gate | Dr. David was an honorary consultant at the Maudsley from 1990-2018 and was awarded a personal chair from the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London in 1996. He was Vice Dean for Academic Psychiatry at the IoPPN in 2013-8. Currently Dr. David is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Academy of Medical Sciences; a member of the Experimental Psychology Society and a founder member of both the British Neuropsychological Society and British Neuropsychiatry Association and was Chairman to the latter from 2004-2007. He has a wide and diverse range of research interests including schizophrenia, neuropsychiatry, medically unexplained syndromes and neuroimaging – both structural and functional. |
 | Tonya White | Generation R | Associate Professor | Erasmus MC Research Gate | Dr. White is an associate professor in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam. Following a junior faculty position at the University of Minnesota, she joined the faculty at Erasmus University Medical Center in 2009 to set up the neuroimaging program in the Generation R study, which has become the largest neuroimaging birth cohort in the world. Her primary research goals are to apply neuroimaging techniques to obtain a better understanding of genetic and environmental factors associated with typical and atypical brain development in hopes that this will translate into either preventing or decreasing the morbidity of severe psychiatric disorders. |
 | David Laplante | Lady Davis Institute, DREAM-BIG | Senior Research Associate | Research Gate | Dr. Laplante is a Senior Research Associate at the Lady Davis Institute of the Jewish General Hospital. With more than 20 years of experience as a co-investigator on five international longitudinal studies of the effects of disaster-related maternal stress on child and adolescent development, his primary research interest focuses on determining how early life adversity affects the developmental trajectories of cognitive, physical, and behavioral functioning. He received his PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Windsor focusing on neonatal visual processing and was Medical Research Council of Canada funded Post-Doctoral Fellow in Psychiatry at Université de Montréal. |
 | Mona Bekkhus | MOBA (Norway) | Associate Professor | Research Gate Google Scholar | Dr. Mona Bekkhus is an Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Oslo and a researcher at the Promenta Research Center. She is an expert in developmental psychopathology. Her research focus on the role of perinatal influences on child development, and her Lab TRACE use data from the large Norwegian Mother, Father and Child cohort to gain new knowledge of some of the mechanisms underlying the link between early life stress and child and adolescent psychopathology. TRACE use data from the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort study. This inter-disciplinary work combines epidemiology, epigenetic and genetic approaches to gain new knowledge on mechanisms that may render some infants more susceptible to adversity and simultaneously more likely to benefit from supportive experience. |
| Full Name | Affiliation | Links | Bio | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Patricia Silveira | Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics & Mental Health | Ludmer Centre ResearchGate | Dr. Silveira is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University, a researcher at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and a Primary Investigator at the Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics & Mental Health. As a developmental neuroscientist, Dr. Silveira brings data and research together across multiple disciplines and diseases, developing a larger, more complex picture of how genetic and environmental factors influence illnesses as diverse as diabetes to mental illnesses. She is exploring how our genes intertwine with the perinatal and early-childhood environments to shape and modulate both health and disease across the entirety of our lifespan, right into old age. |
 | Kieran O'Donnell | Douglas Mental Health University Institute | The Douglas Research Centre ResearchGate | Dr. O'Donnell is an assistant professor at the department of psychiatry of McGill University and a FRQS research scholar at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute. He is a leading expert in perinatal influences on early-childhood development, and the biological embedding of early adversity. His work examines how the early environment shapes child development. This multidisciplinary work combines genetic, epigenetic and epidemiological approaches to identify those at-risk for adverse mental health outcomes. He also seeks to better understand the molecular mechanisms by which positive and nurturing environments mediate their positive effects on child neurodevelopment. |
 | Robert Levitan | CAMH and Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto | CAMH ResearchGate | Dr. Levitan is an expert on atypical subtypes of mood disorders characterized by depressed mood and increased eating behaviour, including atypical depression, chronic depression, seasonal affective disorder, and eating disorders such as binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa. In many cases, these various disorders co-exist in the same individual, suggesting that one or more vulnerability factors are shared among them. Dr. Levitan integrates clinical research in adults with atypical depression with developmental research focused on the early origins of disease. This includes both genetic association studies and novel methodologies emerging from the rapidly evolving field of socio-biology, which focuses on the interplay of nature and nurture. |
 | Alison Fleming | Fleming Laboratory | Fleming Laboratory ResearchGate | Dr. Fleming is an expert in the determinants of maternal care and has developed one of our behavioural measures, BEST (Behavioral Evaluation Strategies Taxonomies). She is also involved in our maternal sensitivity data, data analysis and write-up. Dr. Fleming is primarily interested in understanding why mothers want to mother and for 30 years she has studied this question in rats, in humans, and now in monkeys. Her focus is on the factors that induce the ‘motivation’ to mother in terms of hormonal factors, sensory factors, the role of different brain mechanisms, the influences of early experiences, etc. |
 | Leslie Atkinson | Biopsychosocial Development Lab | Ryerson University ResearchGate | Dr. Atkinson's current research interests involve developmental psychopathology, the study of early biological, psychological, and social factors that influence the course of development, typical and atypical. This interest is the result not only of his graduate training, but of subsequent work at Whitby Psychiatric Hospital with adults with extreme mental health difficulties, Surrey Place Centre with children and adults with intellectual disabilities and their families, and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Child, Youth, and Family Programme. His research at Whitby Psychiatric Hospital and Surrey Place Centre focused on psychometrics, the study of constructs and how best to measure them. He has extensive experience with attachment research and in particular with maternal sensitivity. His lab codes the measure of maternal sensitivity and he will be involved in the maternal sensitivity data, data analysis and write-up. |
 | John Lydon | Lydon Labs | Lydon Lab ResearchGate | Dr. Lydon’s research focuses on intimate social bonds and has examined (1) how attachment bonds regulate stress and well-being; (2) how relationship commitment motivates an individual to expend effort to overcome relationship adversities, and (3) how the social environment impacts on maternal well-being in ways that affect the maternal-infant bond and child development. |
 | Roseanne Clark | University of Wisconsin-Madison | UW Department of Psychiatry ResearchGate | Dr. Clark is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Capstone Certificate Program. Dr. Clark developed the widely used Parent-Child Early Relational Assessment (PCERA) and has been committed to conducting research to inform policy and practice and has been asked to serve on state and national scientific advisory committees. Dr. Clark has been Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on numerous NIH funded studies including a randomized clinical trial examining the efficacy of a mother-infant relational approach for women experiencing major depression in the postpartum period and another investigating the validity of screening and assessment measures of social-emotional functioning in infants and young children. |
 | Helen Egger | Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Chair of NYU | NYU Langone ResearchGate | Dr. Egger is currently co-conducting a number of NIMH-funded studies including a large, community study of preschool anxiety disorders, a longitudinal study of children diagnosed with psychiatric disorders as preschoolers, and an fMRI/eye tracking study of children diagnosed with anxiety disorders as preschoolers. Her program of research focuses on the developmental epidemiology and developmental neuroscience of psychiatric disorders, particularly anxiety disorders, in preschool children. As a child psychiatrist, infant/preschool specialist, and epidemiologist, she brings both a clinical and basic science perspective to research on early childhood mental health. Dr. Egger is lead author of the Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment (PAPA), the first comprehensive structured parent interview for assessing psychiatric symptoms and disorders in preschool children. |
 | Lauren Waschlag | Department of Medical Social Sciences of Northwestern | Northwestern Medicine ResearchGate | As a developmental/clinical psychologist, Dr. Wakschlag's scientific focus is on how early development (from the prenatal-preschool period) shapes mental health pathways. She and her collaborators have generated the first developmentally-sensitive toolkit specifically designed to enhance early identification of mental health problems, via by empirically-based differentiation of the normative misbehavior of early childhood from the onset of disruptive behavior at preschool age. She also focuses on elucidating prenatal origins of disease pathways, and has developed novel methods for multi-level characterization of adverse prenatal environments, investigating prenatal environment x gene interactions, and pinpointing the developmental sequence of exposure-related neurobehavioral vulnerabilities from infancy-adolescence. |
 | Steven Matthews | Matthews Lab | The Matthews Lab ResearchGate | Dr. Matthews is Professor of Physiology, Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Medicine at the University of Toronto and Director of Research at the Alliance for Human Development, Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health System. His research is focused towards understanding how the fetal environment affects developmental trajectories leading to modified neurologic and endocrine function. He has established that these effects can extend across multiple generations and are linked to altered susceptibility to chronic disease. Dr. Matthews was founding co-director of the MAVAN program, which followed neurocognitive development in children following adverse early experience. |
 | Michael Pluess | School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London | Personal Website ResearchGate | Dr. Pluess is a chartered psychologist and professor in developmental psychology at the Department of Biological and Experimental Psychology at the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London. The predominant part of Dr. Pluess’ research deals with questions related to developmental plasticity, the understanding that experiences while growing up shape the course of psychological development. Dr. Pluess’ work also includes the investigation of gene-environment interaction studies pertaining to a diverse range of environmental influences in large-scale longitudinal prospective studies. |
 | Jay Belsky | UC Davis | UC Davis ResearchGate | Dr. Belsky is an internationally recognized expert in the field of child development and family studies. His areas of special expertise include the effects of day care, parent-child relations during the infancy and early childhood years, the transition to parenthood, the etiology of child maltreatment and the evolutionary basis of parent and child functioning. Dr. Belsky's research is marked by a focus upon fathers as well as mothers, marriages as well as parent-child relations, and naturalistic home observations of family interaction patterns. He is a founding and collaborating investigator on the NICHD Study of Child Care and Youth Development (US) and that National Evaluation of Sure Start (UK). |
 | James Li | University of Wisconsin-Madison | University of Wisconsin-Madison Waisman Center | Dr. Li investigates genetic and environmental factors that contribute to individual differences in the development of child ADHD and other externalizing disorders (i.e., oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder). His research combines advanced molecular genetic approaches (e.g., genome-wide association studies, polygenic risk scores, gene-pathways analyses) with rigorous measurements of environmental influences to uncover psychosocial mechanisms of psychiatric outcomes and predict psychiatric outcomes. The goal of his research is to better understand how individual differences in child behavioral development and the development of psychiatric outcomes arise as a function of DNA and our environments, and to ultimately create more effective and personalized mental health care. |
 | Brian Greenfield | Montreal Children's Hospital | Montreal Children's Hospital ResearchGate | Dr. Greenfield is an Associate Professor of clinical psychiatry and pediatrics in the Division of Child Psychiatry at McGill University. He has participated in research into attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity and is currently investigating borderline personality disorder as it presents during adolescence. In his clinical practice, Dr. Greenfield directs the emergency psychiatry service at the Montreal Children's Hospital. |
 | Marla Sokolowski | University of Toronto | University of Toronto ResearchGate | Dr. Sokolowski is a University Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto. Her innovative work is esteemed worldwide as a clear, integrative mechanistic paragon of the manner in which genes can interact with the environment, thus impacting behaviour. She has trail-blazed the development of a branch of Behaviour Genetics that addresses the genetic and molecular bases of natural individual differences in behaviour and is best known for her discovery of the foraging gene. She has published well over 140 publications and given close to 250 invited lectures. |
 | Meir Steiner | McMaster University | Professor Emeritus McMaster Psychiatry Research Gate | Dr. Steiner's research areas are pathophysiology and psychopathology of mood and anxiety disorders related to women’s reproductive cyclicity. Dr. Steiner is a member of many professional societies, including the CCNP which honoured him in 2000 and 2011 with the Heinz Lehmann Award and a medal for a meritorious career for his outstanding contributions in the field of research in neuropsychopharmacology. Dr. Steiner has received continuous research funding both peer-reviewed and industry sponsored since 1971, and he has been involved in or directly responsible for more than 800 publications, abstracts, presentations, and panel discussions. Dr. Steiner is the editor-in-chief of the Archives of Women’s Mental Health, serves on the editorial advisory boards of several other professional journals, and has co-authored and edited several books related to mood disorders in women. |
 | James Kennedy | Professor and Head of the Tanenbaum Centre for Pharmacogenetics in the Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute at CAMH | CAMH and UofT CAMH ResearchGate | Dr. Kennedy's research is dedicated to finding genes involved in the cause of mental illness. He has published pioneering findings relating gene variants in the dopamine, serotonin, and neurodevelopment systems to psychiatric disorders and to treatment response. Dr. Kennedy has also led investigations using powerful DNA sequencing technology to understand genetic variation and function in great detail. Currently, he is applying molecular genetic technology to the study of schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorders, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, addictions, personality disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In addition, Dr. Kennedy is investigating genetic factors that may predict response and side-effects to psychiatric medications (pharmacogenetics). Another important area of interest is the integration of molecular genetics and neuroimaging (MRI, PET) as a combination approach to better understand brain structure and function. |
| Full Name | Affiliation | Role | Links | Bio | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Vanessa Babineau | DREAMBIG | PhD in the School/Applied Child Psychology program at McGill University | JGH Research Gate | Vanessa's research is focused on women’s mental health during pregnancy and the development of infant and early childhood dysregulation from 3 months to 6 years of age, within a gene by environment framework of prenatal maternal depression and child genetic susceptibility (e.g., serotonin allelic variation of 5-HTTLPR). She previously worked with the McGill Youth Study Team on a project that was focused on gestalt processing in high functioning children with autism. |
 | Cathryn Gordon Green | DREAMBIG | PhD candidate in the School/Applied Child Psychology program at McGill University | JGH Research Gate | Cathryn's research interests are centered in the area of biological sensitivity to context. Using the MAVAN (Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability and Neurodevelopment) dataset which is part of the DREAM BIG (Developmental Research in the Environment, Adversity, Mental Health, Biological Vulnerability and Gender) consortium she is currently working on a project investigating how adverse effects of the prenatal environment and genotype interact to predict early age child development and psychopathology. |
 | Alexia Jolicoeur-Martineau | DREAMBIG | Master's in the Statistics program at UQAM | Research Gate | Alexia is a Biostatistician working at the MAVAN lab. She is primarily interested in developing new statistical approaches (or improving already existing approaches) to better understand, predict and generate from data. She devised a novel approach called Latent Environmental and Genetic InTeraction (LEGIT) which considers multiple genes and environment into a single model. |
 | Leonora King | DREAMBIG | PhD candidate in the department of Psychiatry at McGill University | JGH Research Gate | Leonora's current PhD project continues to focus on genetic and psychosocial factors that influence the early life environment. Particularly, her research interests explore gene-by-environment interactions in the prediction of resilience in 5 year-old children. Her analytical models include polygenic risk scores, longitudinal measures of early life adversity as well as outcome measures of hopefulness and emotional regulation. Using the MAVAN (Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability and Neurodevelopment) dataset which is part of the DREAM BIG (Developmental Research in the Environment, Adversity, Mental health, Biological vulnerability and Gender) consortium, she is well placed to explore these research questions. |
 | Eszter Szekely | DREAMBIG | Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Department of Psychiatry, McGill University Faculty of Medicine | JGH Research Gate | Dr. Szekely research interests involve the integration of complex genomic, neuroimaging and behavioral data to the study of developmental psychopathology. In her current research, she works with large, international birth cohorts to evaluate a developmental model which incorporates the complex interactions between our genome, early life stressors, maternal care, temperament and gender in predicting the emergence of later psychopathology. |
 | Marie-Elyse Lafaille-Magnan | DREAMBIG | Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Department of Psychiatry, McGill University Faculty of Medicine | Research Gate | Dr. Lafaille-Magnan is interested in attention, executive functions, memory, concentration, and impulse control. She joined the Dream Big research team at the Child Center for Development and Mental Health to focus on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). She examines the factors that protect against or worsen the development of ADHD. Using multi-modal approach that includes neuropsychological test measures, behavior and function, susceptibility factors, and genetics, and MRI imaging, she investigates Canadian datasets (MAVAN and the UBC neonatal) and will reproduce findings in International datasets (ALSPAC and Generation R). The goal is to understand the sex differences and the potential underlying mechanisms of ADHD. She is also interested in attachment, socio-economic factors, emotional regulation and is coding anger and pro-social skills in preschool children. |
 | Hannah Sallis | DREAMBIG | Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol | Research Gate | Dr. Sallis' research interests are predominantly centred around causal inference techniques and their application to mental health. She is currently based within both the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (School of Experimental Psychology), and the Centre of Academic Mental Health (Bristol Medical School). Prior to this role she gained a BSc in Statistics from University College London and an MSc in Medical Statistics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She completed her PhD investigating causal risk factors for adolescent depression at the University of Bristol in 2016. |
 | Alex Neumann | DREAMBIG | PhD candidate in Erasmus University Medical Center | Research Gate | Alex works in the Generation R Study on the biology of child behavioral and emotional problems and why they frequently co-occur. His research interests are epigenetic mechanisms and their interplay with the environment, but he also investigates white matter brain structure and the stress hormone cortisol. Another ongoing research project is the impact of stressful life events a child experiences on changes in DNA methylation, which may alter gene expression and affect psychiatric symptoms. |
 | Sara Sammallahti | Erasmus Medical Center | Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow | Research Gate | Dr. Sammallahti's research focuses on perinatal health and offspring neurodevelopment. Both a physician and a psychologist by background, Dr Sammallahti received her PhD from the University of Helsinki, Finland in 2018. She has worked with several longitudinal cohort studies, such as the Generation R Study from the Netherlands, to understand the interplay between maternal wellbeing during pregnancy, fetal and infant health, and cognitive and mental health outcomes in the offspring - and the epigenetic and neurodevelopmental mechanisms that may help understand these associations. |
 | Mónica López-Vicente | Generation R, DREAMBIG | Postdoctoral researcher at the Erasmus MC | Research Gate | Dr. López-Vicente studied Psychology and Neuroscience in Barcelona. During her PhD at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), she studied the impact of several environmental factors on neurodevelopment using data from international population-based cohorts. As a postdoc, she moved to The Netherlands to study the development of the brain connectivity in children from the Generation R Study. Her role within the Dream Big project is to disentangle the gene by environment interactions on the development of brain areas that are affected in children with ADHD. |
 | Stella Tsotsi | MoBa (Norway) | Postdoctoral researcher PROMENTA Research Centre (Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway) | Research Gate Google Citations | Dr. Stella Tsotsi is a postdoctoral fellow at the PROMENTA Research Centre (Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway). Previously she has worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (Agency for Science, Technology and Research; Singapore) and as a research scientist at the Centre for Research in Child Development (National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore). Her research to date has focused on the identification of risk factors that may make children more susceptible to developing psychopathology. Currently, she explores how interactions between early life adversity, with a special interest on parental mental health and parenting, and genes influence the development of emotion regulation and socio-emotional difficulties in children and adolescents. |
 | Christian Page | MoBa (Norway) | Postdoctoral researcher (Department of Mathematics, University of Oslo) | Google Scholar ORCID | Dr. Page is a PostDoc in epidemiology at the Department of Mathematics, University of Oslo and a senior analysis in the Norwegian Mother, Father, and child cohort (MoBa). Dr. Page received his PhD in genetic epidemiology in 2016 and have worked with all the nation-wide cohorts in Norway since then. His research has previously focused on epigenetics, but is recently shifted to focus on methods in computational epidemiology. |
 | Reza Amini Gougeh | DREAMBIG | Research Assistant - ML Engineer | Research Gate Google Scholar | Reza is developing ML/AI models to predict children mental health through pre-natal and early childhood environmental factors as well as genes. |
 | Shalaka Shah | DREAMBIG | PhD student in the School/Applied Child Psychology program at McGill University | Shalaka Shah, M.A., is completing her doctoral studies in the School and Applied Child Psychology program at McGill University. Her thesis is focused on the role of genes, maternal stress, and parenting on the development of attachment, using the MAVAN dataset; she is investigating differential susceptibility patterns and exploring the use of psychiatric polygenic risk scores in relation to attachment. Her clinical experiences range from inpatient hospital settings to outpatient/community settings, as well as private practice. |
|
 | Maria Brown | DREAMBIG | PhD student in the School/Applied Child Psychology program at McGill University | Maria’s research interests focus on child and familial factors that shape the development of psychopathology and response to treatment. Specifically, she is focused on examining susceptibility and psychopathology factors in children receiving treatment for emotional and behavioral problems. Her work stems from the quality assurance project of the day treatment program and children’s response to the treatment in the Department of Child Psychiatry at the Jewish General Hospital. | |
 | Meghan Mastroberardino | DREAMBIG | Administrative Coordinator | Research Gate | Meghan started at the DREAM BIG lab as an administrative coordinator in 2021. She graduated with her Bachelors in Honours Psychology at Concordia University in 2019, where she completed her thesis on early development and language acquisition in infants. She is now earning her Master in Science of Management degree at the John Molson School of Business, where she is submitting her thesis on Strengths-Based Nursing and Healthcare Leadership. In her role as administrative coordinator, she works with Dr. Wazana on the budget, grants, and finances of the lab, as well as works closely with team members to apply for funding for new projects. |
 | Alegra Kandiyoti | DREAMBIG | Research Assistant | Alegra is a research assistant for DREAM BIG since 2019. She completed a B.A in Psychology at McGill University. Alegra works on knowledge translation activities, grant reporting and funding opportunities. She also works closely with the MAVAN cohort. She is interested in research on the pathways to anxiety symptomatology in children. |
|
 | Julia Dykun | DREAMBIG | Research Assistant | Julia started at DREAM BIG as a research assistant in 2020. She completed a B.A. in Sociology and Psychology at the University of Western Ontario. In her role, she works alongside the MAVAN (Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability and Neurodevelopment) studies as a researcher and coordinates ongoing research activities including patient recruitment, protocol implementation, and its development. | |
 | Dina Abdelaal | DREAMBIG | Research Assistant | Dina started at Dream-BIG as a research assistant in 2021. She is completing a B.A in Psychology with a minor in Sociology from the University of McGill. As a research assistant she is part of the team of interviewers and participant recruiters for the MAVAN (Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability and Neurodevelopment) studies. | |
 | India Audet | DREAMBIG | Research Assistant | India started as a research assistant at the DREAM BIG lab in September 2022. She completed a B.Sc. in Psychology at McGill University and hopes to pursue graduate studies in psychology. She is one of the interviewers for the MAVAN-R study and assists with tasks related to the OUICARE project. |
| Full Name | Affiliation | Role | Links | Bio | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vanessa Babineau | DREAMBIG | PhD in the School/Applied Child Psychology program at McGill University | JGH Research Gate | Vanessa's research is focused on women’s mental health during pregnancy and the development of infant and early childhood dysregulation from 3 months to 6 years of age, within a gene by environment framework of prenatal maternal depression and child genetic susceptibility (e.g., serotonin allelic variation of 5-HTTLPR). She previously worked with the McGill Youth Study Team on a project that was focused on gestalt processing in high functioning children with autism. |
| Cathryn Gordon Green | DREAMBIG | PhD candidate in the School/Applied Child Psychology program at McGill University | JGH Research Gate | Cathryn's research interests are centered in the area of biological sensitivity to context. Using the MAVAN (Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability and Neurodevelopment) dataset which is part of the DREAM BIG (Developmental Research in the Environment, Adversity, Mental Health, Biological Vulnerability and Gender) consortium she is currently working on a project investigating how adverse effects of the prenatal environment and genotype interact to predict early age child development and psychopathology. |
| Alexia Jolicoeur-Martineau | DREAMBIG | Master's in the Statistics program at UQAM | Research Gate | Alexia is a Biostatistician working at the MAVAN lab. She is primarily interested in developing new statistical approaches (or improving already existing approaches) to better understand, predict and generate from data. She devised a novel approach called Latent Environmental and Genetic InTeraction (LEGIT) which considers multiple genes and environment into a single model. |
| Leonora King | DREAMBIG | PhD candidate in the department of Psychiatry at McGill University | JGH Research Gate | Leonora's current PhD project continues to focus on genetic and psychosocial factors that influence the early life environment. Particularly, her research interests explore gene-by-environment interactions in the prediction of resilience in 5 year-old children. Her analytical models include polygenic risk scores, longitudinal measures of early life adversity as well as outcome measures of hopefulness and emotional regulation. Using the MAVAN (Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability and Neurodevelopment) dataset which is part of the DREAM BIG (Developmental Research in the Environment, Adversity, Mental health, Biological vulnerability and Gender) consortium, she is well placed to explore these research questions. |
| Eszter Szekely | DREAMBIG | Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Department of Psychiatry, McGill University Faculty of Medicine | JGH Research Gate | Dr. Szekely research interests involve the integration of complex genomic, neuroimaging and behavioral data to the study of developmental psychopathology. In her current research, she works with large, international birth cohorts to evaluate a developmental model which incorporates the complex interactions between our genome, early life stressors, maternal care, temperament and gender in predicting the emergence of later psychopathology. |
| Marie-Elyse Lafaille-Magnan | DREAMBIG | Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Department of Psychiatry, McGill University Faculty of Medicine | Research Gate | Dr. Lafaille-Magnan is interested in attention, executive functions, memory, concentration, and impulse control. She joined the Dream Big research team at the Child Center for Development and Mental Health to focus on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). She examines the factors that protect against or worsen the development of ADHD. Using multi-modal approach that includes neuropsychological test measures, behavior and function, susceptibility factors, and genetics, and MRI imaging, she investigates Canadian datasets (MAVAN and the UBC neonatal) and will reproduce findings in International datasets (ALSPAC and Generation R). The goal is to understand the sex differences and the potential underlying mechanisms of ADHD. She is also interested in attachment, socio-economic factors, emotional regulation and is coding anger and pro-social skills in preschool children. |
| Hannah Sallis | DREAMBIG | Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol | Research Gate | Dr. Sallis' research interests are predominantly centred around causal inference techniques and their application to mental health. She is currently based within both the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (School of Experimental Psychology), and the Centre of Academic Mental Health (Bristol Medical School). Prior to this role she gained a BSc in Statistics from University College London and an MSc in Medical Statistics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She completed her PhD investigating causal risk factors for adolescent depression at the University of Bristol in 2016. |
| Alex Neumann | DREAMBIG | PhD candidate in Erasmus University Medical Center | Research Gate | Alex works in the Generation R Study on the biology of child behavioral and emotional problems and why they frequently co-occur. His research interests are epigenetic mechanisms and their interplay with the environment, but he also investigates white matter brain structure and the stress hormone cortisol. Another ongoing research project is the impact of stressful life events a child experiences on changes in DNA methylation, which may alter gene expression and affect psychiatric symptoms. |
| Sara Sammallahti | Erasmus Medical Center | Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow | Research Gate | Dr. Sammallahti's research focuses on perinatal health and offspring neurodevelopment. Both a physician and a psychologist by background, Dr Sammallahti received her PhD from the University of Helsinki, Finland in 2018. She has worked with several longitudinal cohort studies, such as the Generation R Study from the Netherlands, to understand the interplay between maternal wellbeing during pregnancy, fetal and infant health, and cognitive and mental health outcomes in the offspring - and the epigenetic and neurodevelopmental mechanisms that may help understand these associations. |
| Mónica López-Vicente | Generation R, DREAMBIG | Postdoctoral researcher at the Erasmus MC | Research Gate | Dr. López-Vicente studied Psychology and Neuroscience in Barcelona. During her PhD at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), she studied the impact of several environmental factors on neurodevelopment using data from international population-based cohorts. As a postdoc, she moved to The Netherlands to study the development of the brain connectivity in children from the Generation R Study. Her role within the Dream Big project is to disentangle the gene by environment interactions on the development of brain areas that are affected in children with ADHD. |
| Meghan Mastroberardino | DREAMBIG | Administrative Coordinator | Research Gate | Meghan started at the DREAM BIG lab as an administrative coordinator in 2021. She graduated with her Bachelors in Honours Psychology at Concordia University in 2019, where she completed her thesis on early development and language acquisition in infants. She is now earning her Master in Science of Management degree at the John Molson School of Business, where she is submitting her thesis on Strengths-Based Nursing and Healthcare Leadership. In her role as administrative coordinator, she works with Dr. Wazana on the budget, grants, and finances of the lab, as well as works closely with team members to apply for funding for new projects. |
| Alegra Kandiyoti | DREAMBIG | Research Assistant | Alegra is a research assistant for DREAM BIG since 2019. She completed a B.A in Psychology at McGill University. Alegra works on knowledge translation activities, grant reporting and funding opportunities. She also works closely with the MAVAN cohort. She is interested in research on the pathways to anxiety symptomatology in children. |
|
| Julia Dykun | DREAMBIG | Research Assistant | Julia started at DREAM BIG as a research assistant in 2020. She completed a B.A. in Sociology and Psychology at the University of Western Ontario. In her role, she works alongside the MAVAN (Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability and Neurodevelopment) studies as a researcher and coordinates ongoing research activities including patient recruitment, protocol implementation, and its development. |
| Full Name | Affiliation | Links | Bio | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Martin St- Andre | CHU Sainte-Justine | Medecins Francophones Du Canada ResearchGate | Dr. St-Andre is the Chief Medical Officer of the Perinatal Psychiatry and Young Children Clinic at CHU Sainte-Justine, the only Canadian multidisciplinary clinic that integrates adult psychiatry in a perinatal context and child psychiatry. | |
| Cecil Rousseau | McGill University | McGill Psychiatry ResearchGate | Dr. Rousseau is a research and clinical psychiatrist at the Montreal Children's Hospital where she directs the Transcultural Child Psychiatry Clinic. She received her training in medicine and psychiatry at the University of Sherbrooke, Université de Montréal, and McGill. Her clinical work is with refugee children and with torture victims. She also does consultation work for health institutions and school boards on refugee children. | |
| Andrée-Anne Bouvette-Turcot” | McGill University | Grandir Ensemble ResearchGate | Dr. Bouvette-Turcotte's previous work pertained to the interactive effect of maternal history of early adversity and the serotonin transporter polymorphism to predict child temperament. Her main interests encompass child temperament and both external and internal factors that affect its development as well as how it can lead to early signs of psychopathology. | |
| Barbara Hayton | Jewish General Hospital | JGH | Dr. Hayton is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at McGill University. She graduated from McGill School of Medicine, trained as a Family Physician, and is a full time member of the department of Psychiatry at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. Dr. Hayton is the director of the Perinatal Mental Health Service which provides evaluation and treatment of women and couples with pregnancy and postpartum related mental health problems. |
|
| Gilles Julien | La Fondation du Dr Julien | Fondation du Dr Julien | Dr. Julien is a social pediatrician and executive director of the Fondation du Dr Julien (Dr. Julien Foundation), an organization that promotes the advancement of children’s rights through social pediatrics. In Quebec, Dr. Julien is considered the father of social pediatrics: a holistic approach that offers innovative solutions to the special needs of neglected and abused children. Social pediatrics emphasizes family empowerment, physical proximity, and partnerships with the child’s wider community. Dr. Julien and his team see 3,000 children each year. | |
| Elana Bloom | Lester B. Pearson School Board | ResarchGate | Dr. Bloom, is a psychologist at the Lester B. Pearson School Board, having worked in elementary and high schools supporting students with mental health concerns and equipping staff to better understand mental health. Dr. Bloom is currently the Coordinator of the Family School and Support Treatment Team, a model in schools composed of behavioral technicians and consultants to support students with socioemotional and mental health concerns. She is also the Coordinator of the Center of Excellence for Mental Health team, where she provides workshops and builds capacity for school staff across the 10 English school boards in Quebec. |
|
| Kees Maas | Family and Youth Protection Services | Dr. Maas is a retired psychologist that worked with Family Youth Protection Services providing psychosocial services to youth and their family as well as doing research on child welfare. |