Research Team

Jeffrey Newcorn  MD
Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry
Medical Director Center of Excellence for ADHD and Related Disorders
Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics

Dr. Jeffrey Newcorn is an expert in the area of clinical psychopathology and psychopharmacology in children and adolescents with emphasis on youth with disruptive behavior disorders and ADHD. He was a member of the steering committee of the NIMH-funded multicenter study “Multimodal Treatment of Children with ADHD (MTA).” He was a member of the DSM-IV advisory committees on child and adolescent disorders and disruptive behavior disorders. He was the primary investigator on an NIMH-funded ADHD Research Infrastructure Network devoted to understanding the neurobiology of ADHD, and has been the principle investigator or co-investigator on several federally funded (NIMH, NIDA, and NIH funded) grants that examine the clinical, genetic, neuroanatomic and neurophysiologic basis of ADHD its treatment including recent work on a collaborative R01 (with Mark Stein) examining comparative treatment efficacy of MPH in youth with ADHD using both clinical and pharmacogenetic measures, and a supplement R01 grant which examines mechanisms of action of methylphenidate and atomoxetine using fMRI biomarker tasks.

Dr. Newcorn is a nationally recognized educator and mentor, and is the primary or secondary mentor on several NIMH training grants. He is an editorial board member of several leading child psychiatry and psychology journals, and conducts ad hoc reviews for many other leading psychiatry journals, and NIMH. Dr. Newcorn maintains a private practice, directs an active clinical trials program, and is an expert and consultant regarding many of the newer medication treatments for ADHD. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and numerous book chapters on these and related subjects.

Mary Solanto, PhD
Clinical Program Director Center of Excellence for ADHD and Related Disorders
Associate Professor Psychiatry

Dr. Solanto is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and director of the ADHD Center in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Icahn School of Medicine. Her research on the cognitive and behavioral functioning of children with ADHD, the effects of psychostimulants, and the characteristics of the Predominantly Inattentive subtype of ADHD has been supported by grants from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases, the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Dr. Solanto has worked extensively with adults with ADHD. She developed a novel cognitive-behavioral intervention which targets problems of time-management and organization in adults with ADHD and was the focus of a recently completed NIMH-sponsored treatment efficacy study. The therapists' manual for that treatment will shortly be published by Guilford, and is titled, Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Adult ADHD: Targeting Executive Dysfunction.

Dr. Solanto is active in clinical work and in the training of psychiatrists and psychologists to diagnose and treat AD/HD and related disorders. She has conducted workshops with parents and teachers concerning identification and treatment of children with AD/HD, and has presented to adult groups on strategies to improve organization and self-management. Dr. Solanto has published numerous scholarly papers concerning ADHD in children and adults and is a frequent reviewer for professional journals. She has served as a grant reviewer for NIMH. Currently, she is a member of the advisory board of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Attention Disorders and the Journal of the newly formed American Professional Society of ADHD and Related Disorders. Dr. Solanto edited a book (along with Amy Arnsten and Xavier Castellanos) titled: Stimulant Drugs and ADHD: Basic and Clinical Neuroscience, (Oxford University Press), which investigated the mechanisms of action of stimulants in ADHD.

Anne-Claude Bedard, PhD
Assistant Professor, Psychiatry

Dr. Bedard has a burgeoning resume in neuropsychological studies of ADHD. Her primary interest is in the study of impaired cognition in childhood mental disorders, with a particular focus on theoretical and methodological approaches to studying the impact of different intervention modalities on cognitive functioning in ADHD. Dr. Bedard is completing a fellowship funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research that provides training in the use of fMRI to examine the influence of treatment on cognitive functioning in youth with ADHD and has a fellowship grant by the Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation to examine the neural correlates of visual-spatial working memory in youth with ADHD using fMRI (mentors Dr. Newcorn, Dr. Schulz, and Dr. Halperin).

Suzanne Clerkin, PhD
Assistant Professor, Psychiatry

Dr. Clerkin’s work focuses on the cognitive neuroscience of arousal, attention, and executive functions. She received training in neuroimaging from Drs. Kurt Schulz and Jin Fan and has been involved in functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of adults and youth with and without ADHD, as well as imaging studies of reward mechanisms. She collaborates closely with Dr. Jeffrey Halperin, and conducts the imaging analyses for grants. In addition to gaining expertise in functional neuroimaging, she is funded by a K12 training grant to acquire knowledge of diffusion tensor imaging. Her current study is testing for differences in measures of white matter integrity among young adults who were diagnosed with ADHD in childhood compared to controls.

Stephanie Duhoux, PhD
Post doctoral Fellow, Psychiatry

Jeffrey Halperin, PhD
Clinical Neuropsychology
Professorial Lecturer, Psychiatry

Dr. Halperin is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Queens College CUNY and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research is dedicated to understanding neural functioning in ADHD, developmental trajectories, and methods of altering these trajectories to improve outcomes across an individual's lifespan. Dr. Halperin has a long history of collaboration with Dr. Newcorn and the researchers at Icahn School of Medicine.

Iliyan Ivanov, MD
Child and Adolescent, Psychiatry
Assistant Professor, Psychiatry

Dr. Ivanov is a Board certified child psychiatrist with extensive experience in clinical psycho-pathology and psychopharmacology among children and adolescents, with emphasis on youth with disruptive behavior disorders. He is completing a Career Development award as lead Primary Investigator examining differences in brain activation in youth with inhibitory control deficits using both clinical measures and fMRI tasks.

Beth Krone, PhD
Clinical Research Coordinator

Juan Pedraza, MD
Assistant Professor, Psychiatry

Kurt Schulz, PhD
Assistant Professor, Psychiatry

Dr. Schulz is the recipient of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression Young Investigator's Award for his work on the neural mechanisms of Major Depressive Disorder among adolescents with ADHD. He is becoming an expert in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine developmental and treatment mechanisms in children, adolescents, and adults with ADHD.

Research Partners

Our partners at University of Illinois, Chicago:

Mark Stein, PhD
Clinical Psychology
Director of HALP Clinic and ADHD Clinical Research Center
Professor Psychiatry

Dr. Stein has specialized in ADHD for more than 25 years. A prolific writer and researcher, his interests lie in diagnosis of ADHD, genetics, thyroid functioning, and psychopharmacology. He is currently operating the Chicago site of the MACRO pharmacogenomics study, examining predictors of response to treatment with methylphenidate and atomoxetine and examining sleep problems associated with ADHD and its treatment.

Our partners at New York University, NYC:

Lenard Adler, MD
Professor Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Department of Psychiatry

Dr. Adler's interests lie in psychopharmacology and treatment of ADHD and anxiety and mood problems that are often associated with ADHD.