Laurel Joy Gabard-Durnam, PhD

Laurel Joy Gabard-Durnam, PhD, is an associate professor of psychology and associate director of the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Health at Northeastern University. She received her BA in Neurobiology from Harvard University and a PhD in Psychology from Columbia University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital prior to starting as faculty at Northeastern University. As a developmental cognitive neuroscientist, Dr. Gabard-Durnam conducts research to understand and apply principles of brain plasticity to improve children’s lives. She focuses on how early experiences shape the brain and behavior and give rise to individual differences across clinical and neurotypical populations in global contexts. She has contributed to the World Health Organization’s position paper on how to define and apply measures of brain health globally. She has been recognized with awards, including the APA Boyd McCandless Award, and her research has been supported by sources including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Gates Foundation, and Wellcome Leap Foundation.