Despite evidence that 1 in 5 children are at risk for psychiatric disorders, only 1 in 20 young children receive mental health care. Thus, a high number of children who would benefit from mental health care remain untreated. My long-term goal is to improve brain-based targets for early detection and behavioral interventions of childhood psychiatric disorders. The area of perinatal-developmental neuroscience (PDN) is of high public health significance as a substantial proportion of pregnant women will experience health, environmental, or psychological stressors, which have early and long-lasting effects on offspring. Increasing the number of research programs that can support training in PDN is paramount. The K24 will allow me to: 1) expand my expertise in advanced analytic methods to support trainee research, and 2) establish an internationally recognized research and training program focused on fetal-infant brain and behavioral origins of mental health. My K24 training program, the Columbia Engagement, Stability, and Success in PDN will provide an individualized approach to research training: assessing the research skills and career goals of mentees early on and developing personalized training modules; didactics; experiential, hands-on training; and research productivity that follow their individualized plan. The program also includes a monthly seminar series alternating between science and career-networking topics. Our prior studies suggest there may be common biological pathways by which early exposures exert their influence on offspring conferring psychiatric risk – with recent attention to the immune system and/or hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, and brain regions involved in behavioral regulation. Using the expanded analytic skills obtained through this K24, my mentees and I will conduct studies to examine whether four key prenatal exposures: maternal depression, body mass index, infection, and blood glucose are associated with connectivity and morphology of brain regions (e.g., dorsal anterior cingulate) involved in behavioral regulation. In a subset of the cohort, we will also consider the potential mediating effects of inflammation and glucocorticosteriods. I have a unique opportunity to pool data from cohorts of pregnant women-fetal dyads involved in research studies (2004 to present; n~500) at Columbia University Irving Medical Center – a large center with a diverse patient population – and perform new data collection harnessing health information technology (e.g., electronic medical records). The data set will serve as a platform for my mentees to produce pilot projects and manuscripts, and practical experience conducting a project in an area of PDN that matches his/her career goals within the scope of this funding mechanism. My strong commitment to and ongoing research in patient-oriented research focused on identifying early antecedents of psychiatric risk, individualized mentorship plans, direct involvement of mentees in the c...