News & Announcements
Read our most recent news highlighted below from the Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences (DevSci). Delve into our news archive page or stay updated by subscribing to our quarterly newsletter DevSci Developments and receive the latest updates directly in your inbox.
Our Latest Stories:
DevSci Spotlight: Mental Health, Earlier Director, Aeysha Chaudhry
May 19th, 2025
As Executive Director of the Mental Health, Earlier center, Dr. Aeysha Chaudhry is on a mission to bring together her passions for public health and community engaged research at DevSci.
“I don’t have a developmental science background at all, but that didn’t stop me from taking any of the other roles that I did previously, because I think the methods and the way that I approach research is the same,” she said.
Mental Health, Earlier is a new initiative at DevSci focused on interdisciplinary early childhood development, including neurodevelopment, which describes how the brain matures, and psychopathology, the study of mental health illnesses. The center is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.
Chauhdry completed her masters in public health in London and then went on to pursue her PhD in community health sciences at the University of Illinois-Chicago School of Public Health. Motivated by a close connection to the Chicago community and a desire to work with marginalized communities, Chaudhry’s work at Mental Health, Earlier aims to involve the community with clinical pediatric research. She said this ensures that caregivers’ voices are heard.
As part of Mental Health, Earlier’s community engagement efforts, Chaudhry says what she is most proud of in her work at DevSci so far has been developing community advisory boards, or CABs. For example, she has formed two advisory boards composed of caregivers, one English speaking and one Spanish speaking. Chaudhry has also recruited pediatric primary care clinicians from hospitals around Illinois and other states to create a clinical community advisory board.
These advisory boards are instrumental in getting feedback on Mental Health, Earlier’s research projects, Chaudhry said. She said that the clinical board includes not only clinicians from Illinois, but also from a partner hospital in Delaware.
“Our clinical partners at Nemours Children’s Hospital really were excellent partners to us and really helped us engage diverse caregivers, which is really exciting,” Chaudhry said.
Currently, Chaudhry is helping spearhead multiple projects in Mental Health, Earlier. One set of projects aims to develop different early intervention interview frameworks. For example, the DECIDE tool, which stands for “Developmental Early Childhood Instrument for Deciding Equitably for Mental Health,” is an early mental health risk calculator that pediatricians can use in early child visits, with the goal of identifying these risks by preschool age. The community advisory boards, both the caregiver and clinician ones, offer feedback and help gauge feasibility of the tools for caregivers and physicians.
Another project is creating a clinician training program for pediatricians to improve communication about early childhood mental health so that is more culturally sensitive and resonates with young children and their caregivers. The advisory boards are also involved in providing feedback to this.
Chaudhry said that DevSci’s collaborative nature has supported her work as a researcher.
“The center is the perfect example of how DevSci is involved with interdisciplinary team science,” she said. “It has taught me, personally, more about how team science can work in a clinical setting.”
Mental Health, Earlier is still in its early stages, but Chaudhry said she is excited to see how the projects develop.
“We’re able to more creatively approach the problem of early childhood mental health because we have multiple stakeholders involved,” she said. “Our intervention won't be successful unless we have all types of clinicians that I mentioned and scientists involved in it because they are able to collectively share their expertise,” she said.
DevSci Spotlight: Post-doc Fellow Blaire Pingeton
May 16th, 2025
Blaire Pingeton is a second year T32 Mental Health, Earlier Postdoctoral Fellow through the NU Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences. Read our Spring 2025 interview below with Blaire to learn more her accomplishments and the exciting work that she is doing through the fellowship.
- Year you won the fellowship
2023
- Past degrees/completed programs of study
I hold a bachelor’s degree in music, with a focus in classical voice and a minor in creative writing, from
New York University. After college, I enrolled in the postbaccalaureate program in psychology at Columbia University, where I also worked full-time as a research assistant. I earned my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Emory University in 2023, just prior to starting the fellowship.
- Your current program of study
I’m currently a T32 postdoctoral fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Darius Tandon. His lab focuses on the dissemination and implementation of Mothers and Babies, an evidence-based intervention designed to prevent postpartum depression. My research builds on this work by exploring how interventions like Mothers and Babiescan be enhanced to support not only parental mental health but also child development. We’ve made significant progress in treating perinatal depression, but many existing interventions have limited impact on the child. My goal is to better understand how perinatal depression affects early development—and to develop targeted, two-generation interventions that address that risk pathway.
- Your current research at NU
a. Key objectives/research questions:My research aims to identify the mechanisms by which perinatal depression influences child outcomes, and to test intervention strategies that could buffer or interrupt that trajectory.
b. What you are most excited about:I’m especially excited about adapting Mothers and Babies to better support parenting behaviors that promote early relational health—things like sensitive caregiving and responsiveness—which we know are crucial to child outcomes.
c. Innovation/impact: This work is innovative because it moves beyond symptom reduction for parents to explicitly target parenting behaviors as a modifiable mechanism. The potential impact is large: by strengthening the parent-child relationship during a critical developmental window, we may be able to alter long-term trajectories for children exposed to perinatal depression-- the most birth complication.
- Why/how you applied for the T32 through DevSci
I’ve always been drawn to perinatal mental health as an early and powerful point of intervention to improve outcomes for children and families. Much of my earlier work focused on identifying mechanisms using observational data. As a postdoc, I was eager to move into applied, translational research in real-world settings. The DevSci T32 stood out to me because it offered a unique combination of training in neurodevelopmental science and community-engaged research—exactly the intersection I was hoping to deepen.
- How the fellowship is supporting your current work
The fellowship has been tremendously supportive. It has provided dedicated time and funding to focus on research, as well as access to a network of faculty whose expertise has helped shape my current projects. I’ve collaborated with several T32-affiliated mentors on both manuscripts and grant proposals, and I’ve been able to access key resources—such as specialized training and software—that have elevated the quality of my work.
- Other roles DevSci has played in supporting your research
Beyond research support, DevSci has provided an intellectual home. The seminars, peer feedback sessions, and cross-disciplinary training opportunities have helped me refine my ideas and build lasting professional relationships. I've nurtured several skillsets through DevSci initiatives, such as my interest in community-engaged interventions.
- Advice for future applicants to the T32
Be clear about how your work aligns with DevSci’s mission, and how the training can help you grow in areas you haven’t yet had the opportunity to develop. I’d also encourage applicants to think broadly about the potential for collaboration—this program is rich with faculty and peers who are genuinely invested in helping each other succeed.
- Future plans
My long-term goal is to lead a research program focused on improving early relational health in families affected by perinatal mental health conditions.
DevSci Community at Society for Research and Child Development
May 1 - 3, 2025
Conference Website: https://www.srcd.org/event/srcd-2025-biennial-meeting
- Session Name: Building Positive Health: Temperament, Family, and Social Context in Child Well-Being Across Developmental Stages
- Paper Title: Unlocking Positive Health: Intra- and Interpersonal Risks and Strengths Shaping Childhood Positive Health Assets
- Presenting Author: Courtney King Blackwell, Ph.D. (Faculty Affiliate)
- Session Name: The NIH Infant and Toddler Toolbox: Overview of the Cognition, Motor, and Social-Emotional Domains
- Paper Title: Development and initial validation of the NIH Baby Toolbox Social-Emotional Functioning assessments
- Presenting Author: Courtney King Blackwell, Ph.D. (Faculty Affiliate)
- Discussant: Richard Gershon, Ph.D. (Faculty Affiliate)
- Session Name: Out-of-School Time Tech: Supporting Children’s STEM Engagement through Digital Tools and Conversations
- Paper Title: When Technology Meets Tinkering: Promoting Museum Engineering Engagement through Digital Storytelling
- Lauren C. Pagano, Ph.D (PostDoc)
- Session: Using longform recordings to study individual differences in children’s exposure to speech
- Paper: The challenges of using longform recordings to understand young children’s language environments in rural Malawi
- Adriana Weisleder, Ph.D. (Faculty Affiliate)
- Poster: The effects of bilingual exposure on the NIH Baby Toolbox Language scores
- Miriam A. Novack, Ph.D. (Faculty Affiliate)
- Session Name: Research Addressing Pandemic Challenges to Improve Developmental and Learning Outcomes for Children with Disabilities
- Paper: Reducing the Wait: The Development and Evaluation of a New Autism Diagnostic Pathway
- Megan Roberts, Ph. (Faculty Affiliate)
- Poster: The Role of Imagistic Gestures in Supporting Middle School Students’ Scientific Understandings about Climate Change
- Lauren C. Pagano, Ph.D., (PostDoc)
- Session: Advancements in Quantitative Methods that Illuminate the Complex, Multi-level Role of Teacher-Student Relationships
- Paper: Teacher-Student Relationships and Children’s Adjustment are Associated Within- and Between-Persons from Kindergarten to Grade 6
- Sophia Magro (PostDoc)
- Session: Leveraging Community Insights to Guide Early Childhood Measurement Systems
- Paper: Early Childhood Community Experts’ Perspectives on the Skills Children Need to Thrive in the 21st-Century
- Terri Sabol, Ph.D. (Faculty Affiliate)
- Session: Mechanisms of Early Childhood Learning on Health and Well-Being Across Generations
- Discussant: Norrina Bai Allen (Faculty Affiliate)
- Session: Exploring Investments in Parents to Improve Parent, Child, and Family Outcomes
- Paper: The Longer-Term Effects of a Two-Generation Education Program on Parents and Adolescents from Low-Income Families
- Teresa Eckrich Sommer, Ph.D., (Faculty Affiliate)
Graduate Cluster Panel Event
April 24, 2025
The DevSci Student Graduate Cluster – Career Pathways Panel for Spring 2025 focused on careers in industry . This panel was a great success, offering graduate students a wealth of practical advice and inspiration for pursuing careers beyond academia. Panel members included Bri Hightower, Ph.D., UX Research Manager at Pulse Labs; Emily Hittner, Ph.D., VP of Research at Hinge; Sheila Krogh-Jespersen, Ph.D., UX Research Scientist at Meta's Reality Lab; Silvia Lovato, Ph.D., Head of Learning and Research at PBS KIDS; and Naomi Polinsky, Ph.D., Senior Director of Research at Hillel International. Graduate students gained valuable insights into how to develop compelling resumes for non-academic positions, effectively market their research and analytical skills, and navigate the process of applying to roles in various private and non-profit sectors. Importantly, students learned how their expertise could be valuable in industries such as television, marketing, app development, and nonprofits—fields where critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication are highly sought after. The event empowered attendees to better understand and articulate their strengths to potential employers across a wide range of industries and explore career opportunities outside of academia.
DevSci Spotlight: Post-doc fellow Brittany Manning
April 3, 2025
Like many young children, Brittany Manning was a little slower learning to talk. When Manning was in high school, she started accompanying her younger sibling, who was diagnosed as a late talker, to speech therapy visits. It was here that she discovered her fascination with speech-language pathology, the study of communication disorders. 
Now, Manning is a postdoctoral fellow at DevSci. Her current research investigates the connections between early language development and mental health challenges in children.
Manning is a member of DevSci’s “Mental Health, Earlier” training program, a National Institute of Mental Health-funded research fellowship focused on interdisciplinary childhood neurodevelopment and psychopathology. Neurodevelopment describes how the brain matures throughout childhood and beyond, and psychopathology is the study of mental health illnesses.
“Mental Health, Earlier” postdocs study mental health challenges and resilience in children and young adults. Their work aims to inspire early intervention strategies for kids with development challenges to prevent mental health issues down the line.
“It just has been an amazing resource for me in particular because my research is so interdisciplinary,” Manning said about the program.
Before her professional research journey, Manning obtained undergraduate and masters degrees in communicative disorders from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked as a speech-language pathologist (SLP) in Chicago, interacting with children that had challenges understanding or using language.
She noticed that children with language difficulties also often had co-occurring mental health or neurological challenges, such as ADHD, autism spectrum disorder or anxiety.
“At the time, most of the research in my field was really focused on specific language weaknesses. We even had a word for it. It was called specific language impairment, which implied that there were a lot of kids that had isolated language weaknesses,” Manning said. “But in clinical practice, we knew that this really wasn't the case.”
Manning eventually left clinical practice to pursue a Ph.D. in communication sciences and disorders and speech-language pathology at Northwestern, where she worked under Dr. Elizabeth Norton, co-director of the Neurodevelopmental Research & Assessment Core at DevSci.
Manning’s dissertation focused on a developmental skill called joint engagement and its effects on language development. Joint engagement describes how children and caregivers intentionally interact with an object or activity together, like playing with a toy.
Manning measured brain electrical activity in children who were late talkers and those with normal language development during joint engagement sessions with their parents. She found that both groups showed similar neural activity. This meant that joint engagement could be a potential way to introduce language development exercises for late talkers.
Combining her neuroscience work in her Ph.D. and clinical experience, Manning sought to further investigate ways to advance speech-language pathology and support kids with co-occurring challenges.
“A lot of children I worked with in clinical practice didn't just have diagnoses in the domain of language. They had associated diagnoses in the mental health domain, social challenges, behavioral challenges, and so that's something I really wanted to dig deeply into in my postdoc.” Manning said.
In her postdoc, Manning is currently working with DevSci director Dr. Laurie Wakschlag on identifying risk factors of mental health challenges in young children, like co-occurring late talking and temper tantrums, in speech-language pathology settings. Manning hopes to then teach evidence-based mental health techniques to SLPs to help improve the success of speech therapy sessions.
As a “Mental Health, Earlier” fellow and DevSci trainee, Manning said that interacting with a variety of DevSci experts, such as clinical psychology researchers, social workers and child mental health specialists, through research talks and symposiums at DevSci has supported her interdisciplinary interests.
“This has really helped me become a better researcher. I learn about new methods across these different fields,” Manning said. Alongside her postdoctoral fellowship, Manning has also applied for a career development grant to support her goals of becoming an independent researcher.
Manning said she is grateful for DevSci’s collective work.
“We each are trained in our own fields, and we have the desire to help children support their development so that they have more successful outcomes later in life,” Manning said.
October 10th, 2024
First-of-its-kind center targeting mental health prevention in early childhood in routine pediatric care. Northwestern University has launched a new Mental Health, Earlier Center at the Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences (DevSci), thanks to an $11.7 million award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the National Institutes of Health.
Read the full article here.
Dr. Laurie Wakschlag, DevSci Director, Receives Paula H. Stern Award
February 28, 2024
DevSci leaders are delighted to share that DevSci director Dr. Laurie Wakschlag has been honored with this year’s Paula H. Stern Award for Outstanding Women in Science and Medicine.
This honor is given by the Feinberg School of Medicine Women Faculty Organization to "an FSM woman faculty member who has spent a significant portion of her career at Northwestern, has exhibited successful basic, translational, or clinical research, strong leadership at a local, national or international level in her field, and who has an exemplary track record of inspiring and mentoring trainees and/or young investigators."
In addition to serving as the Founding Director of the Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences (DevSci), Lauren ("Laurie") S. Wakschlag, PhD is the Professor and Vice Chair for Scientific and Faculty Development in the Department of Medical Social Sciences (Division of Determinants of Health), and Professor of Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Psychology, and Human Development and Social Policy.
Read full story at Feinberg News
November 13, 2023 – from Breakthroughs