Faculty and Staff
John Piacentini, Ph.D., ABPP is Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in the David Geffen School of Medicine and Director of the Child OCD, Anxiety, and Tic Disorders Program at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Georgia and completed post-doctoral training and was a faculty member at Columbia University/NY State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Piacentini has authored over 140 papers, chapters, and books and has received numerous NIH and other grants addressing the etiology, assessment and treatment of childhood anxiety, OCD, tic disorders, and adolescent suicide. He is Chair of the Tourette Syndrome Association Behavioral Sciences consortium, Founding Fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, President-elect of the American Board of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Trichotillomania Learning Center. Dr. Piacentini is also Deputy Editor for the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and an editorial board member for several leading psychology journals. He is a frequent lecturer and actively involved in training mental health practitioners how to treat youngsters with anxiety and similar problems.
Dr. McCracken is the Joseph Campbell Professor of Child Psychiatry and Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the UCLA NPI-Semel Institute (formerly the Neuropsychiatric Institute) in Los Angeles. Dr. McCracken is the principal investigator of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Research Center, "Translational Research to Enhance Cognitive Control,"which aims to develop and test innovative treatments for cognitive defects associated with child psychiatric illness. His other current areas of research include family-genetic studies of childhood disorders and the testing of new pharmacologic treatments for a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders in children, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety disorders.
Susanna Chang is an assistant professor in UCLA Department of Child Psychiatry. Her clinical work is focused on evidence-based cognitive-behavioral treatments for childhood anxiety and tic disorders. Her research interests center around neurocognitive aspects of childhood neuropsychiatric disorders such as OCD and Tourette Syndrome. In particular, she examines questions regarding how cognitive processes such as response inhibition, affect regulation and decision-making may interact with treatment response in these children. Understanding the potential cognitive deficits related to OCD and Tourette Syndrome may lead to the development of targeted and more effective treatments to enhance cognition in children who suffer from these conditions.
Audra Langley, PhD is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, where she works within the UCLA Child OCD, Anxiety, and Tic Disorders Program. Dr. Langley is also the Director of Training for the LAUSD/UCLA/RAND Trauma Services Adaptation Center for Schools and serves as Chair of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network School Committee. Dr. Langley is a researcher and clinician who specializes in cognitive behavioral treatment for children and adolescents with anxiety, PTSD, and related disorders, and her work seeks to make evidence-based interventions available to students in accessible settings, such as schools. Dr. Langley received her Ph.D. in Clinical Child Psychology from Virginia Tech and went on to specialize in CBT with children and adolescents during her internship at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. She was the recipient of an NIMH-funded National Research Service Award to further her postdoctoral research training in the clinical evaluation of evidence-based treatments for anxiety disorders. Dr. Langley has served as investigator, trainer, clinician, and clinical supervisor on several clinic and school-based studies and trials treating children and adolescents with Anxiety, PTSD, and OCD and has presented and published research papers on her work.
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Dr. Joyce Chang Lee is a post-doctoral psychologist at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. She specializes in working with children and adolescents with anxiety, OCD, selective mutism, and tic disorders. She completed her graduate work at U.C. Berkeley with a focus on girls with ADHD and parent-child relationships. She has been working with the UCLA Child OCD, Anxiety, and Tic Disorders Program since 2005.
Dr. Tara Peris is a Clinical Instructor at the UCLA Semel Institute. Her clinical specialty is in evidence-based treatments for child and adolescent anxiety disorders. Her research interests center on family factors that may influence the treatment process for youth with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). She is currently developing a family-focused treatment for childhood OCD designed to help families learn to respond to OCD effectively and to manage the family issues it raises successfully. Dr. Peris completed her graduate training at the University of Virginia and has worked with the Program since 2004. She is the recipient of a NARSAD Young Investigator Award as well as recent awards from the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation (OCF) and the Friends of the Semel Institute.
Adam B. Lewin is a NIMH postdoctoral fellow at UCLA Neuropsychiatic Institute. He is the Friends of Semel Institute Fellow for 2007-2008. Dr. Lewin is examining response inhibition and sensorimotor deficits among youth with OCD and Tic Disorders. His areas of interest include predicting treatment response and relations between family functioning and outcome/syndrome severity. Dr. Lewin completed his doctoral work at the University of Florida and his clinical residency at the UCLA Semel Institute. He has worked as a cognitive-behavioral therapist to treat these disorders since 2001.
Donald Nathanson is a study coordinator at the Child OCD, Anxiety, and Tic Disorders Program at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. He graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in Psychology. He currently coordinates the Collaborative OCD Genetics Study, Positive Family Interaction Study and the OCD MRS study
