Steering Committee

The Externalizing Consortium was launched in 2017 by Danielle Dick, Ph.D., in partnership with Philipp Koellinger, Ph.D. It is currently led by four research teams, with other significant contributors as follows:

 

Principal Investigators:

 

Danielle M. Dick, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School where she serves as the inaugural director of the Rutgers Addiction Research Center at the Brain Health Institute and holds the Greg Brown Endowed Chair in Neuroscience. Her research focuses on understanding genetic and environmental influences on substance use and related outcomes across development.

 

Dr. Philipp Koellinger is Professor of Public Affairs at University of Wisconsin-Madison and Professor in Economics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research investigates how genes influence economic behavior, and how insights into the genetic architecture of behavioral outcomes can inform social and medical research. He is one of the founders and PIs of the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium and the BIG BEAR research consortium.

 

Dr. Paige Harden is Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she directs the Developmental Behavior Genetics Lab and co-directs the Texas Twin Project . Her research uses genetic methods to understand the developmental roots of social inequality across the lifecourse. She is the author of The Genetic Lottery: Seeking Equality in a World Where Genes Shape Success, forthcoming in Spring 2021.

 

Abraham A. Palmer, Ph.D., is Professor and Vice Chair for Basic Research in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego (www.palmerlab.org) and is the Director of the NIDA National Center of Excellence for GWAS in Outbred Rats . His research explores the genetic and molecular basis of behavior using humans, rats, mice and zebrafish. His other car is a 1977 VW bus.

 

 

Externalizing 1.0 Lead Analysts:

 

Richard Karlsson Linnér, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the department of Economics at Leiden University. His research includes investigating the genetic architecture of mental disorders and health-risk behaviors, including smoking, substance use disorders, and addiction, by leveraging large-scale molecular genetic datasets. He dreams of owning a 1977 VW bus, preferably in turquoise.

 

Travis T. Mallard, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral research fellow working with Dr. Jordan Smoller in the Psychiatric & Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. His research uses genetic methods to understand the etiology of psychopathology with an emphasis on substance abuse and serious mental illness.

 

 

Peter B. Barr, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Health Sciences University and a health scientist at the VA New York Harbor Healthcare System. His research explores the interplay between genetic risk for psychiatric disorders and social conditions across the lifecourse. In his spare time, he aspires to be a slightly above average masters weightlifting competitor.

 

Sandra Sanchez-Roige, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the University of California San Diego and Vanderbilt University. Her laboratory uses genetic tools to unravel the biology of substance use disorders and comorbid psychopathology, using humans and animal models.

 

Other Significant Contributors:

 

Irwin D. Waldman, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology, Head of the Behavior Genetics of Child Personality & Psychopathology Lab, and a member of the Center for Quantitative & Computational Genetics at Emory University. His primary research interests are in developmental psychopathology, the structure of psychopathology, and developmental behavior genetics.

 

 

Externalizing 2.0 Lead Analysts:

 

Holly Poore, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Molecular Neuroscience of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Training program at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on understanding the sources of phenotypic and genetic overlap among various forms of psychopathology, behavioral, and personality traits.

 

 

Camille M. Williams, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas, Austin. Her research focuses on examining the extent to which brain anatomy mediates genetic and environmental effects on general cognition and psychopathology. She also uses genetic methods to research the etiology of cognition, psychopathology, and externalizing behaviors and to control for genetic effects when examining environmental effects.

 

Peter T. Tanksley, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral fellow with the Population Research Center and the University of Texas at Austin. His research examines the gene-environment interplay between externalizing behaviors and life-course outcomes. In particular, he is interested in the biological factors that impact/are impacted by contact with the criminal justice system. He does not have spare time but thinks Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) is pretty cool.

 

Natasia Courchesne-Krak, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. Her research integrates state-of-the art bioinformatic approaches with large-scale population genomic datasets to advance our understanding of the genetic contribution to substance use disorders across the lifespan.