Autumn Kujawa, Ph.D.

 

In 2017, Dr. Autumn Kujawa was awarded a Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation (KTGF) Fellowship for her project entitled “Neural Predictors of Response to Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) for Adolescent Depression.” This study used electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure individual differences in reward responsiveness and emotion regulation abilities that prospectively predict depressive symptom change and clinician-rated improvement for adolescents with depression participating in an established group CBT program. The results of this work were published in Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology.

Dr. Kujawa is a faculty member in the Department of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt University, where she directs the Mood, Emotion, & Development Laboratory. In the years since she was awarded a KTGF fellowship, Dr. Kujawa has become a highly productive, independent clinical researcher. Her research leverages psychophysiological and neuroimaging methods to elucidate vulnerabilities for mood disorders and inform more targeted and personalized intervention efforts. Dr. Kujawa has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles on these topics and received additional research funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, and American Psychological Foundation. She has been recognized as a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science and awarded the Society for Psychophysiological Research Award for Distinguished Early Career Contributions to Psychophysiology.

Dr. Kujawa is also a dedicated mentor to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers and junior faculty. In particular, she is a mentor to Dr. Alexandra Bettis, who was awarded a KTGF fellowship in 2020 for her project “Mobile Health Intervention to Improve Access to Care After a Psychiatric Emergency Department Visit”.