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The Society for Research in Child Development’s Early Career Award Committee selected Dr. Gray to receive the 2019 Early Career Research Contributions Award. This prestigious award honors strongly distinguished researchers and scholars based on their research, publications, and scholarly activities. In particular, Dr. Gray was recognized for using diverse methodologies to understand how contextual factors are associated with mother-child relationships, psychophysiology, and violence exposure in child development and for employing strengths-based and person-centered approaches in studying sensitive parenting and physiological self-regulation in mother-child dyads among vulnerable populations. Dr. Gray was honored at the 2019 SRCD Biennial meeting and received an honorarium for her contributions. More information on 2019 SRCD Biennial Awardees can be found here: https://www.srcd.org/meetings/biennial-meeting/2019-srcd-biennial-awardees

The Tulane Child and Family Lab is happy to announce that Dr. Gray’s new study, A Randomized Controlled Trial to Improve Biobehavioral Regulation Among High-Adversity Mothers and Young Children, has been funded by the NIH Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award (K23). This new project will determine whether Mom Power, an evidence-based two generation intervention for mothers, enhances physiological and behavioral self-regulation in mothers and young children, testing mechanisms and examining bidirectional effects. We are so excited to start piloting this project soon!

Gray Lab members are regular attendees at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Annual Meetings. This year, at the 34th annual meeting in Washington DC, Gray Lab PhD students Erin Glackin and Chloe Pickett, as well as undergraduate Research Assistant Chloe Cristian represented the lab at the conference. Glackin presented a symposium entitled “Mothers’ Adverse Childhood Experiences Predict Dysregulated Autonomic Activity in their Preschoolers,” a piece of our ongoing work on physiological stress regulation in mothers and their preschool children. Pickett and Cristian presented their poster “Maternal Attitudes towards Aggression Moderate Associations between Maternal Experiences of Early Adversity and Behavioral Problems in Preschoolers.” We are always very excited for opportunities to share our research, and very proud of Erin, Chloe, and Chloe for their hard work! 

Chloe Cristian, a current senior and member of the Tulane Child and Family Lab, has been awarded the Conference Presentation Grant from Newcomb Tulane College. This grant will fund her travel costs to attend the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) Annual Meeting this November in Washington D.C.  She will be attending along with Erin Glackin and Chloe Pickett, doctoral students in the Tulane Child and Family Lab. Glackin will be presenting a symposium titled “Mothers’ Adverse Childhood Experiences Predict Dysregulated Autonomic Activity in their Preschoolers,” and Pickett and Cristian will be presenting their poster, “Maternal Attitudes Towards Aggression Moderate Associations Between Maternal Violence Exposure and Behavior Problems in Preschoolers.”  

We are proud to have such strong representation at the ISTSS Annual Meeting, and especially proud of Chloe Cristian for earning this special funding opportunity. 

CFL collaborator Dr. Stacy Drury has been selected by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry to receive the 2018 Norbert and Charlotte Rieger Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement, which recognizes the most significant paper published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry by a child and adolescent psychiatrist in the past year. The award winning paper, “Thinking Across Generations: Unique Contributions of Maternal Early Life and Prenatal Stress to Infant Physiology,” was co-authored by Dr. Sarah Gray and Gray Lab doctoral student Erin Glackin, as well as Dr. Kat Theall at Tulane’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and Christopher Jones, a doctoral student in Tulane’s Neuroscience program.  We are proud of our interdisciplinary work on the impact of trauma across generations being recognized by such an honor! 

Read more here: http://news.tulane.edu/pr/tulane-psychiatrist-wins-national-award-research-shows-how-trauma-seeps-across-generations

Ginny Hatch, one of the graduate research assistants in the Tulane Child and Family Lab, recently received the Outstanding Poster Award in her division at the 2018 American Psychological Association conference. Her poster, “Social Support Buffers the Impact of Maternal Exposure to Violence on Children’s Externalizing Behaviors,” included findings that speak to the importance of relationships and their protective role following exposure to trauma. Congratulations Ginny, we are so proud of you!

As part of our ongoing partnership with Kingsley House, a local New Orleans Head Start, the Tulane Child and Family Lab offered the first of a two part Professional Development series for teachers and social workers at the school. Lead presenters, Erin Glackin and Chloe Pickett, helped school staff learn about trauma, adverse childhood experiences, and the importance of relationships with adults for young children experiencing trauma.

We are so excited to come back to Kingsley House in July to delve even deeper into these topics!

Dr. Gray has traveled all the way to Rome to share some new findings from our ongoing Parent Child Coping Study, as well as Stacy Drury’s Infant Development Study! Her presentation, “Intergenerational Effects of Maternal Adverse Child Experiences on Children’s Stress Physiology: Evidence Across Age Groups” discussed her work with Christopher Jones, Erin Glackin, and Stacy Drury surrounding infant and child physiological stress markers, namely respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). Across both infants and pre-school children, findings suggest that maternal adverse childhood experiences as well as maternal stress across her lifetime influence her child’s RSA response. These findings speak to the importance of early life experiences, reducing stress in pregnant women and mothers, and learning more about early relationships. 

Justin Carreras, a research assistant in the Tulane Child and Family Lab who will begin his 5th year as a doctoral student this fall, has received another poster award! His poster, “Intergenerational Transmission of Emotion Regulation: Mediation through Mothers’ Responses to Children’s Negative Emotionality,” was awarded Best Poster at the 2018 Louisiana Psychological Association (LPA) Convention this May. He was also selected for an Outstanding Poster Presentation Award at the Louisiana School Psychology Association Annual Meeting back in 2016, for his poster about assessing low income mothers’ needs for parenting support services. Keep up the great work, Justin!