Yale Child Study Center (YCSC)—which serves as the Department of Child Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine—welcomes and introduces new community members on an ongoing, voluntary basis. All new faculty, staff, and trainees are invited to share bios and photos upon joining the department, and those who wish to participate are announced approximately monthly.
One of the newest additions to the community is Karolena Rafferty, who joined the Before and After Baby Lab (BABL) as a postgraduate associate (PGA) in December, after graduating from Mount Holyoke College with a bachelor’s in psychology. In PGA role, she assists with examining maternal psychological risk factors that influence mother and infant adjustment through neural responses. Rafferty shares that she is passionate about using developmental research to improve family health outcomes and access for patients, and she is interested in the impact of adverse childhood experiences on parent and child development.