Judith Rapoport, MD, and Jerome Kagan, PhD

Each year the Child Mind Institute’s Scientific Research Council selects an exceptional researcher for the Sarah Gund Prize, in recognition of an outstanding contribution to child and adolescent psychiatry, psychology or developmental neuroscience. The award honors contributions to clinical science or basic science. The award carries a prize of $25,000 and is presented at the Child Mind Institute’s Annual Child Advocacy Award Dinner. The award recipient, along with several other scientists selected because they have been influenced by recipient’s work, are featured presenters at our next On the Shoulders of Giants scientific symposium.

Dual awards were made in 2011.

2011 Sarah Gund Prize in Clinical Science

Judith Rapoport, MD, has dedicated her life’s work to advancing the understanding of childhood psychiatric disorders and seeking new and better treatments. She has made seminal contributions to our understanding of three separate conditions: childhood-onset schizophrenia, ADHD, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Dr. Rapoport has been the founder and chief of the child psychiatry branch of the National Institute of Mental Health for the last 30 years.

2011 Sarah Gund Prize in Basic Science

Jerome Kagan, PhD, a member of Harvard’s faculty for 40 years, has devoted himself to the study of how temperament emerges and develops in the first decade of life. His landmark research on shyness showed us how environmental and genetic factors interact and influence behavior and predict psychiatric illness in later life. Dr. Kagan’s systematic, thoughtful and patient observations of typical, healthy children have transformed our understanding of the genetic and biological factors underlying anxiety disorders, and set the stage for the explosion of research we are currently undergoing.