Postdoctoral Fellow Awarded National Institute of Mental Health F32 Grant

Erin Andres, Ph.D. has been awarded an individual postdoctoral fellowship (F32) by the National Institute of Mental Health to support training and a specific research project. The F32 fellowship grants are part of a prestigious program of the National Institutes of Health to invest in and promote talented early-stage researchers.

Dr. Andres’ research project will build on and expand work in Dr. Stephen Sheinkopf’s research group, bringing in new ideas to the team’s ongoing studies of infant cries in relation to developmental outcomes. She will be investigating what caregivers think or perceive about infant cries (e.g., how distressed an infant sounds) and how a caregiver’s perception influences the caregiver-infant interactions.

Her fellowship also includes a range of training experiences, including deepening her knowledge of the clinical characteristics of autism, acoustic analysis methods, and advanced statistical methods. The fellowship also supports her professional development through multiple activities including presenting scientific findings to different types of audiences. The training and mentorship team includes Drs. Stephen Sheinkopf and Connie Brooks at the Thomspon Center, Dr. Phil Wood in the University of Missouri’s Department of Psychological Sciences, and Dr. Gordon Ramsay at the Marcus Autism Center at Emory University.

Dr. Andres’ background is in applying family-based genetic analysis to the study of language impairment. As she moves her clinical research focus to autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions, this fellowship will support her in becoming an independent researcher and her goal to contribute to more precise behavioral measurement for use in future genetic investigation of language impairment and autism.

Dr. Andres will collect new data from caregivers about their perception of prerecorded infant cries and analyze existing data collected by researchers at the Marcus Autism Center.