Who are PCSAS Graduates?

What is your current profession/position and how do you feel it relates to clinical science? I am currently the Vice President of Translational Science at Woebot Health, a digital mental health company whose mission is to make healthcare radically accessible. Clinical science is at the core of what I and my team do every day. The role of a translational scientist is to take our understanding of how to treat serious diseases–understanding the mechanisms–and translate that knowledge into guidance and requirements that a team of engineers and content writers can then build into an effective digital mental health treatment. Translation is also about discovering ways to advance clinical science by leveraging the digital modality to deliver treatment and assess behavior in new ways.

How did your clinical science training prepare you for your profession/position? My clinical science training taught me to focus on problems and mechanisms. Whether it be case formulation for conceptualizing treatment or elucidating causal/maintaining factors in research, the focus was always on deeply understanding the problem at hand. Developing digital mental health interventions in an industry setting is all about solving problems, and the ability to think critically about the nature of the problem to inform a data-driven and first principles approach is something that I directly attribute to my training.

For you, what does it mean to be a clinical scientist? Being a clinical scientist means marrying a passion for exploration and discovery guided by theory and data with a methodical approach and healthy sense of skepticism. 

What is your current profession/position and how do you feel it relates to clinical science? I am currently working as a Senior Data Scientist at Pluralsight. Pluralsight is an online platform that offers technology-focused courses and resources. While my role at Pluralsight is not directly related to clinical science in terms of content, it does have strong connections in terms of skills. I primarily work on machine learning and recommendation algorithms, which require a solid foundation in statistics and coding, which was a strong focus in my graduate program. Additionally, I often conduct and evaluate product experiments to enhance user experiences and outcomes.

How did your clinical science training prepare you for your profession/position? Learning to code during my clinical science training has been instrumental in my career and opened up diverse opportunities. Training in statistics has also been vital; though I’ve had to learn on the job, my training enables me to confidently delve into research papers and documentation that utilize mathematical concepts, even when those concepts are new to me. Thinking like a scientist, a fundamental aspect of clinical science, has proven to be a powerful asset in industry. It allows me to approach problems systematically, engage in experimentation, and critically assess data. I’ve noticed that I’m frequently the first to notice common errors, such as issues related to correlation and causation, confounders, and seasonality, when they arise in business thinking.

For you, what does it mean to be a clinical scientist? To me, being a clinical scientist means having the tools to cut through the noise and uncritical thinking that often pervade the field of mental health, but also arise in almost any type of human thinking. Being a clinical scientist involves relying on evidence, rather than your aesthetically preferred school of thought or clinical practice. The core principles of clinical science emphasize the importance of knowledge, pragmatism, and clear thinking above ego, and these principles have been valuable in guiding my approach to both my work and life.

What is your current profession/position and how do you feel it relates to clinical science? I am currently an Assistant Professor for a Master’s in Counseling Psychology program at Santa Clara University (SCU). About 40% of my time is dedicated to teaching, 40% to research, and 20% to service. My position relates to clinical science directly as I direct the Love Research Laboratory at SCU; I conduct research with my students to understand the key elements that contribute to the creation and maintenance of healthy relationships. I also develop innovative online and in-person interventions teaching youth healthy relationship skills, such as communication and interpersonal emotion regulation. Even when I am not directly involved in research, I am always using clinical science to build my teaching curriculum or drawing from evidence-based therapies to inform my clinical practice.

How did your clinical science training prepare you for your profession/position? My clinical science training at the University of Arizona prepared me to be able to both evaluate and conduct high-quality basic research and intervention studies while simultaneously working on the frontlines as a clinician treating a variety of mental health and relational issues. My training also inspired me to think about gaps in dissemination and implementation science, pushing me to think about ways that we can disseminate interventions more quickly!

For you, what does it mean to be a clinical scientist? Being a clinical scientist means that I have developed exceptional skills across many important domains—clinical work, research, and teaching. Being a clinical scientist allows me to be able to see the world and impact it on a micro and macro level, from seeing clients face-to-face through my small private practice to training the next generation of clinicians through my program or developing evidence-based interventions that can be disseminated to thousands of people online. It is an empowering feeling to be able to have these “superpowers” and a career path that allows for multiple job opportunities across the lifespan.

What is your current profession/position and how do you feel it relates to clinical science? I am a Research Scientist at Washington University in St. Louis. My work includes the study of motivational and reward related impairments in those with mood and psychotic disorders to identify mechanisms and treatments targeting these symptom domains that are so impairing but for which we have few effective treatments. My work combines three things that I believe are important to clinical science: 1) assessment of symptoms, concerns, and lived experience of those with serious mental illness 2) using these clinical experiences to inform my research aimed at understanding and targeting symptoms that are impairing in daily life and 3) mentoring undergraduate and graduate students who will become future clinical scientists. 

How did your clinical science training prepare you for your profession/position? My graduate training was fundamental for providing the training necessary for my profession. I think the best clinical scientists strive to have a comprehensive understanding of the people we aim to help in both research and clinical settings. This was modeled to me across graduate training via clinical supervisors and clinical work which emphasized the careful assessment of experiences and symptoms, utilizing interventions informed by science, and monitoring treatment progress to ensure we are on the right track. My research training mirrored this by emphasizing a thorough assessment of my research questions via multiple methods of measurement including clinician rated symptom assessment, behavioral observation, self-report, and physiologic measures of feelings and behaviors. Incorporating a careful and thorough assessment of people and research questions at hand are all skills that I use daily as a clinical scientist. 

For you, what does it mean to be a clinical scientist? I think a clinical scientist is a person that uses science to inform clinical intervention, uses clinical insights to inform research questions, and/or disseminates these findings and trains others. With research, a clinical scientist incorporates their understanding of the things that are troubling clients into their research in order to assess, understand and/or develop treatments. For clinical work, a clinical scientist incorporates appropriate assessment techniques, incorporates interventions that are informed by science, and monitors and tracks treatment outcomes. While these can sometimes feel like different worlds, it seems crucial to combine forces and utilize these shared skillsets so that we can  progress in understanding and treating mental health concerns. 

What is your current profession/position and how do you feel it relates to clinical science? I am an Assistant Professor (Research) at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and the Miriam Hospital’s Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center. My position is almost entirely research-focused, and my program of work is focused on understanding how social determinants of health impact weight-related health in marginalized communities, most notably sexual and gender minority groups and people living with HIV. My K23 (sponsored by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities) is focused on culturally tailoring an evidence-based online behavioral weight loss intervention for sexual minority women, showing a clear integration of clinical science and research.

How did your clinical science training prepare you for your profession/position? The clinical science training that I received at Rutgers taught me both the value and limitations of psychology research, learning that informed my career path. My graduate training instilled in me a deep appreciation for the value of conducting research to test and optimize the effectiveness of our clinical interventions, but it also clarified how so much of our research has overlooked the perspectives of people from marginalized communities. The goal of my research today is to center the perspectives of people from sexual and gender minority communities in research on weight, weight stigma, and cardio-metabolic health.
 
For you, what does it mean to be a clinical scientist? For me, being a clinical scientist means understanding the value that research has in ensuring that the psychological treatments we develop and deliver are effective, while also having the humility to see the wisdom of each individual, family, and community we work with to shape our conceptions of healing and health.

What is your current profession/position and how do you feel it relates to clinical science? I am a clinical psychologist at the VA Bedford Healthcare System, where I serve as the Co-Director of our Advanced Fellowship in Psychosocial Rehabilitation and as a Research Investigator in the Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC). In my clinical roles, I support our suicide prevention team as well as providing recovery-oriented care for veterans with serious mental illness (SMI). In addition, I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the UMass Chan Medical School. In all these roles, I draw on my clinical science training to serve as a direct care provider, supervisor/mentor, and researcher.

How did your clinical science training prepare you for your profession/position? Beyond the core experiences in research and clinical training (which absolutely prepared me for my current role), clinical science training provided really valuable skills in areas such as communicating scientific findings/evidence-based treatments to different types of audiences, developing skills as a writer, and leadership skills. Learning to provide mentorship and organize a research team was extremely valuable.
 
For you, what does it mean to be a clinical scientist? More than anything, my training helped me to apply a scientific lens to every aspect of my work. Because of this training, I approach research, teaching, and clinical care with questions such as: “How can we improve this process? How can we develop new ways of providing treatment that improve outcomes? What does the evidence say about why this treatment may or may not work?” The clinical science training I received helps me to flexibly apply scientific training across many different roles.

What is your current profession/position and how do you feel it relates to clinical science? I am currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. Although we do not have a clinical program at Cornell, many of the students are interested in topics related to clinical science. In addition to teaching courses related to clinical topics, I am studying questions related to clinical phenomena and populations.

How did your clinical science training prepare you for your profession/position? Throughout my training as a clinical scientist, I became highly attuned to observing and analyzing behavior. As a researcher, I was trained to apply various behavioral coding systems to quantify affective and relational processes. As a clinician, I learned to notice relevant behaviors—beyond just the words my client would express to me—and consider all of this “data” when conceptualizing the case. These experiences prepared me for a career in which I form ideas and questions, measure behaviors to test these questions, refine and develop new ideas and questions, and so on.

For you, what does it mean to be a clinical scientist? Clinical scientists draw upon scientific perspectives to shape clinical practice, and they apply clinical insights to guide science and policy. We strive to improve the quality and availability of evidence-based methods and interventions in order to improve the public’s health and well-being. 

What is your current profession/position and how do you feel it relates to clinical science? I am a Professor at the University of Michigan and I split my time between the Department of Psychology and the Eisenberg Family Depression Center (EFDC). This special position affords me a great deal of time to focus on clinical research. I was attracted to it because the vision for the EFDC is to create a nexus for multidisciplinary science that moves the needle on alleviating the suffering caused by depression and improving mental health more broadly. 

How did your clinical science training prepare you for your profession/position? I was fortunate to train in a program that valued both excellent clinical and scientific training, as well as their integration. Each of these is necessary for good clinical science. What stands out from my training, though, is the strong emphasis on methodology. In particular, the importance of harmonizing theory, data acquisition design, and statistical model. This is hard to do well, but using this harmony as a guide has served me well in my career.

For you, what does it mean to be a clinical scientist? Clinical science (or scientist) is a generic term that doesn’t do justice to the field of clinical psychology, and lumps us in with any number of health related professions. As a term it belies the difficulty of understanding the complexity of human thought and behavior well enough that we can effect meaningful change in people. Nevertheless, within clinical psychology, to me clinical science is science which is informed and guided by clinical phenomena, their treatment, and clinical settings, and that is designed to improve our understanding of the phenomena, generate more potent interventions, and improve how clinical settings function. Good clinical psychological science spans foci and scale, from the cortex to countries, and cuts across many methodologies, from imaging to immigration policy.