Meet Our Team

The Center is led by Keith H. Nuechterlein, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Director of the Aftercare Program, a research clinic for schizophrenic patients, UCLA Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Dr. Nuechterlein specializes in neurocognitive processes in schizophrenia, especially as they relate to both the developmental course of the disorder and to functional outcome. Dr. Nuechterlein’s ongoing longitudinal study of the early course of schizophrenia, “Developmental Processes in Schizophrenic Disorders”, has closely examined the influence of specific neurocognitive vulnerability indicators on the early course of first-episode patients, with an emphasis on occupational and educational outcome. He holds a joint... more

Dr. Bearden is Associate Professor in Residence of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Psychology and the Assessment Director of the CAPPS research program. She earned her doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. After completing a clinical internship at UC San Diego/VA Medical Center, she completed postdoctoral training in Pedatric Cognitive Neuroscience at the Penn/Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, before joining the UCLA faculty in 2003, where she was recently promoted to Associate Professor. Her research aims to understand genetic influences on brain structure in the development of psychosis, using converging methods to study cognition and neuroanatomy in clinical high-risk samples (adolescents at ultra high-risk for psychosis),... more

Thomas R. Belin, Ph.D., is a Professor in the UCLA Department of Biostatistics who since 1995 has had a joint appointment in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. Dr. Belin came to UCLA as a post- doctoral fellow after receiving his Ph.D. in Statistics from Harvard in 1991, where he was a student of Donald Rubin, and he has been on the UCLA faculty since 1993. Dr. Belin's research interests focus on incomplete-data problems and causal inference, and he has expertise in methodologies such as multiple imputation, propensity-score adjustment, hierarchical models, and mixture models. He was elected to be a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2004, and in 2005 he received the Gertrude M. Cox Award from the Washington (DC) Statistical Society... more

Michael Foster Green, Ph.D. is a Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and is Director of the Treatment Unit of the Department of Veteran Affairs VISN 22 Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC). Dr. Green obtained his B.A. in psychobiology at Oberlin College, his doctorate in neuropsychology at Cornell University, and his postdoctoral training in neuropsychology at UCLA. He is an associate editor for Schizophrenia Bulletin and on the editorial boards of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry and Schizophrenia Research.  He has authored over 230 journal articles. He has received numerous grants from... more

Gerhard Hellemann, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, received his doctorate in psychology from UCLA where he studied psychometrics under Dr. Peter Bentler. Dr. Hellemann has both theoretical and practical experience with mixed models, hierarchical data, structural equation modeling, factor analysis, and path modeling techniques, all of which are essential for this center’s research. He has worked closely with many of the project scientists both during his graduate studies and more recently as a SIStat consultant. He has played a key role in the center’s initial cross-project analyses.

Gerhard Hellemann, Ph.D., biostatistician, received a Dipl.Stat. From the University of Dortmund and a Ph.D. in Psychometrics and Measurement from UCLA in 2005.

Dr. Hellemann’s main research... more

William P. Horan, Ph.D., is an Associate Research Psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA. Dr. Horan completed his Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of New Mexico, a clinical internship at the Western Psychiatric Institute & Clinic in Pittsburgh, PA, and a post-doctoral fellowship at UCLA. He investigates emotional, social cognitive, and neurocognitive processes in schizophrenia, and how disturbances in these areas impact functional outcome. Specific research interests include negative symptoms, translation of concepts and methods from basic affective and social cognitive neuroscience to studies of schizophrenia, and psychosocial treatments for people with severe mental illnesses. For further information, please visit... more

Robert S. Kern, PhD is a Research Psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and holds a joint appointment with the Treatment Unit of the Department of Veteran Affairs VISN 22 Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC). Dr. Kern is a recognized leader in cognitive rehabilitation in schizophrenia and has received extramural funding from NIMH, the Veterans Administration, and the Stanley Medical Research Institute. His research efforts have been devoted to understanding cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia and developing improved methods of psychiatric rehabilitation. He has been principal investigator of a series of studies over the past 15 years that have explored the efficacy of a... more

Kenneth Subotnik, Ph.D. is an Adjunct Professor of the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences. He is the Associate Director of the Aftercare Research Program, Principal Investigator of a study on long-acting antipsychotic medication. He received his Ph.D. from the UCLA Department of Psychology in 1990. His areas of special research interest include: 1) the prediction of psychotic symptom return in individuals in the early phase of schizophrenia; 2) the examination of psychological factors affecting medication adherence, such as insight and attitudes toward antipsychotic medication; and 3) the impact of long-acting antipsychotic medication on clinical outcome in first-episode schizophrenia.

Joseph Ventura, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Psychologist and member of the Faculty in the UCLA, Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences. Dr. Ventura and his colleagues have developed and published a set of internationally recognized diagnostic and symptom assessment training and quality assurance procedures. He is responsible for all training and quality assurance functions, development, standardization, and refinement of the Center's diagnostic and psychiatric symptom assessment procedures.

Cindy M. Yee-Bradbury, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine. Dr. Yee-Bradbury received her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and completed her clinical internship training at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. Her current research focuses on neurocognitive vulnerability to schizophrenia and on the relationship between stress and emotion to vulnerability to schizophrenia, emphasizing the interrelationships between physiological, psychological and social aspects of behavior. Dr. Yee-Bradbury directs the Laboratory on Clinical Affective Psychophysiology which... more