Letkiewicz Joins 2021 TL1 Cohort
Allison Letkiewicz, PhD, has joined the 2021 cohort of Northwestern University’s TL1 Multidisciplinary Training Program in Child and Adolescent Health.
As part of the incoming cohort, Letkiewicz will take part in a novel program that seeks to promote interactions among both mentors and trainees in pediatrics and engineering in order to encourage creative thinking and new approaches in child health research. Nearly every Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute TL1 appointee who has completed their postdoctoral training, remains engaged in clinical and translational science — two are in industry, and nine have accepted faculty positions at Northwestern or other institutions.
Letkiewicz, a postdoctoral researcher within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, has always been passionate about pediatric mental health. “With a background in clinical psychology, ultimately, I am interested in conducting research that helps to alleviate psychological suffering and enhances well-being,” she says.
Letkiewicz received her PhD in Clinical Psychology with a concentration in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has been working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Northwestern Emotion and Risk (NEAR) Lab with her primary TL1 mentor, Stewart Shankman, PhD.
The training and mentorship that I will receive through my TL1 project will support my acquisition of research skills and knowledge of methods that will help me to further build my program of research in pediatric mental health.”
Her TL1 research project will focus on identifying cognitive processes that confer risk for psychopathology. “I am interested in knowing which aspects of thinking and information processing contribute to, or increase one’s likelihood of developing, mental health disorders,” she explains. “The primary goal of my TL1 project is to zoom in on cognitive inhibition, or the ability not to engage in automatic responses (such as yelling out answers in class) and to ignore irrelevant information (such as the sound of people talking in the background), and determine how specific deficits in cognitive inhibition that are identified using computational (mathematical) modeling relate to mental health disorders in youth.”
Letkiewicz will build on previously conducted research to assess what happens in the brain when cognitive inhibition is not “working” well and how this relates to symptoms across many mental health disorders. “This work will hopefully inform treatment approaches aimed at enhancing cognitive inhibition in youth to reduce risk for a broad range of mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and alcohol and substance use disorders,” she says.
She is also extremely grateful for the translational and applicational opportunities made available to her by the TL1 program. “The training and mentorship that I will receive through my TL1 project will support my acquisition of research skills and knowledge of methods that will help me to further build my program of research in pediatric mental health. Critically, I will also receive training in implementation science and translational research, preparing me to build a bridge between the lab and the clinic and enhance patient outcomes.
“The methods that I use, such as computational modeling and neuroimaging, are a critical part of my work, as they are tools that can help me to develop more effective ways to identify, prevent, and treat mental health disorders long after I graduate from this program,” she says. Her hope is to directly improve the lives of as many children and families as possible with the knowledge that she will take away from TL1, and use her research to help future patients.
Research reported in this publication was supported, in part, by the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Grant Number TL1TR001423. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
Written by Morgan Frost
