Catherine Monk

Dr Catherine Monk is the inaugural Diana Vagelos Professor of Women’s Mental Health in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology and professor of medical psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is also Research Scientist VI at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She oversees the clinical service, the Division of Women’s Mental Health @Ob/Gyn, an embedded mental health programme in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Dr Monk’s research brings together the fields of psychopathology, developmental psychobiology, developmental neuroscience and perinatal psychiatry, to focus on the earliest influences on children’s developmental trajectories – those that happen in utero – and how to intervene early to prevent mental health problems. She collaborates with colleagues to include biological and psychological processes in her research, for example using MRI techniques to study variation in brain development related to prenatal maternal factors such as distress and poor nutrition, and examining gene expression in placentas related to similar maternal variables. Her research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since her NIMH Career Development award in 2000.