Distinguished Neuroscientist Tomáš Paus Joins Child Mind Institute

Dr. Paus will serve as the Dr. John and Consuela Phelan Scholar and Director of Population Neuroscience Research for the Healthy Brain Network

New York, NY, April 15, 2015 — The Child Mind Institute (childmind.org) is pleased to announce that Dr. Tomáš Paus, a world-renowned population neuroscientist and an expert in mapping the human brain, is joining the organization. Dr. Paus will serve as the Dr. John and Consuela Phelan Scholar and Director of Population Neuroscience Research for the Healthy Brain Network, a newly launched initiative to create a large online database of health information.

“We are thrilled to have Tomáš join the Child Mind Institute,” said founder and president Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz. “Tomáš’ proven track record in investigating the role genes and the environment play in shaping the adolescent brain will be invaluable as we embark on our mission of finding a biomarker for mental illness through the Healthy Brain Network.”

Dr. Paus’ position is funded through the generosity of Child Mind Institute board members Amy and John Phelan in memory of John’s parents, Dr. John and Consuela Phelan. “My mother was extremely supportive of my father’s medical career which was primarily focused on how the brain affects behaviors and emotions,” remarked John Phelan. “Amy and I are honored to memorialize my father’s passion for brain research through the pioneering work of Dr. Tomáš Paus and the Child Mind Institute.”

Dr. Paus is a pioneer of an integrated approach to brain health whereby knowledge and tools from epidemiology, neuroscience, and genetics are combined under the umbrella of population neuroscience. He introduced this concept in his 2010 article “Population Neuroscience: Why and How” and expanded it in the book “Population Neuroscience” (Springer 2013). An accomplished and respected researcher, he has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and 13 book chapters. He and his colleagues have been cited in over 26,000 publications.

“I am very excited to be working with the Child Mind Institute,” Dr. Paus said. “Their commitment to cutting edge science, particularly through the Healthy Brain Network, is truly outstanding and I look forward to contributing in every way that I can.”

The Healthy Brain Network (HBN) will provide the scientific community with an unprecedented dataset that can be used to improve the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders from a biological perspective. The HBN will collect comprehensive information on 10,000 children and adolescents, and freely share this anonymous data with the best research minds from diverse fields all over the world to spur discoveries.

Dr. Paus is also Senior Scientist and Anne & Max Tanenbaum Chair in Population Neuroscience at the Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, and Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. In this role, Dr. Paus uses a rich multi-modal database containing detailed information about the brains, genes, and environment collected in over 4,000 typically developing adolescents. This database has been built over the past 10 years in the context of several population-based cohorts based in Canada and Europe.

About the Child Mind Institute (childmind.org) The Child Mind Institute is the only independent nonprofit organization exclusively dedicated to transforming mental health care for children everywhere. Founded by Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz and Brooke Garber Neidich, our organization is committed to finding more effective treatments for childhood psychiatric and learning disorders, building the science of healthy brain development, and empowering children and their families with help, hope, and answers. The Child Mind Institute does not accept funding from the pharmaceutical industry.