Symposia

Conte Center@UCI 11th Annual Symposium

The Power and Potential of Big Data and Consortia for Studying Mental Health and Disease
Tuesday, March 26, 2024 - 9:00am - 4:00pm

The recordings can be seen below. There are separate links for each Keynote Speaker. Pictures can be seen here.

9:35AM Stream below:

Keynote Speaker: Christina Chambers PhD: Dr. Christina Chambers is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine at UC San Diego. She is Chief of the Division of Environmental Science and Health, and Co-Director of the Center for Better Beginnings. She is the principal investigator of MotherToBaby Pregnancy Studies, and the UC San Diego Human Milk Research Biorepository, two nation-wide longitudinal cohort studies focused on the safety of medications, vaccines, substances, infectious agents, and other environmental exposures in pregnancy and lactation. Dr. Chambers co-directs the HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study (HBCD), a nationwide research initiative focused on developmental trajectories of children in various environments from prenatal life through 10 years of age. In addition, Dr. Chambers leads research and educational initiatives in the U.S. and internationally on the prevention and treatment of children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. She co-directs the Center for Population Science and Community Engagement in the Clinical and Translational Research Institute at UC San Diego which supports clinical research development in diverse populations.

11:00PM stream below:

Keynote Speaker: Caroline Nievergelt PhD: Caroline Nievergelt, Ph.D. is a human geneticist in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSD with a focus on biological psychiatry, population and statistical genetics. During her career, she has investigated complex human traits and disorders across diverse human populations through genetic linkage and association studies with a special interest in evolutionary biology. Dr. Nievergelt plays a key role in large collaborative efforts and is currently leading the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Her ultimate goal is to identify the relationship between genetic risk and biological and environmental factors at the basis of behavioral traits and to translate insights from psychiatric genetics to clinical applications.

3:00PM:

Keynote Speaker: Christine M. Heim PhD: Christine Heim is Professor and Director of the Institute of Medical Psychology at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, a principal investigator in the German Research Foundation Excellence Cluster NeuroCure, and a principal investigator in the Charité Mental Health partner site of the German Center for Mental Health. She is Research Professor in the Center for Safe & Healthy Children at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Heim’s research in focuses on understanding the influence of early adverse experience on mental and physical health across the lifespan and on identifying the biological and psychological mechanisms that lead to adverse health outcomes. Her research aims to identify the processes of biological embedding of early adversity and the molecular, neural, physiological, cognitive, emotional and behavioral processes that together lead to the developmental programming of adverse health outcomes. With her research, she hopes to pave the way for a novel improved conceptualization of mental disorders that considers developmental-mechanistic pathways across diagnostic boundaries and enables innovative and targeted precision interventions to mitigate adverse health outcomes. More than 43,000 citations reflect the impact of Dr. Heim’s research. She is the recipient of several international honors and awards. She is member and Vice Speaker of the Biomedical Class of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, a Fellow of the Max Planck School of Cognition, and a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. She is the recipient of multiple federal grants, including two federal research alliance grants on childhood adversity. She serves on numerous scientific review committees.