News

We are pleased to announce that Jessie Northrup, PhD, has been promoted to Assistant Professor of Psychiatry by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. 

Dr. Northrup earned her PhD in clinical and developmental psychology from the University of Pittsburgh, and conducted her clinical psychology internship at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital. Her research focuses on emotion regulation in individuals with autism spectrum disorder, with a particular focus on parent-child interactions. Her graduate research examined parent-infant coordination of vocalizations and gaze longitudinally across the first year, using micro-coding of parent and infant behavior, as well as sophisticated data-analytic techniques for describing dyadic coordination. As a postdoctoral scholar under the mentorship of Carla Mazefsky, PhD (Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology), and Alison Hipwell, PhD, PsyD (Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology), Dr. Northrup expanded her focus to include school-aged children and adolescents with autism. She now leads a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-funded K23 career development award that builds on this expertise, focusing on parent-child interaction and emotion regulation in preschoolers with autism, the typical age of diagnosis and entry into intervention.

“A senior autism researcher from another university once described Dr. Northrup as ‘an extraordinary star,’ which I think is quite befitting,” said Dr. Mazefsky. “She is absolutely brilliant, with the rare combination of advanced analytical skills, tremendous clinical skills, and ability to craft really insightful and novel research questions. She is bringing an entire new direction to our autism research program with her focus on early childhood emotion regulation development, and I can’t wait to see how this evolves. I feel fortunate to be her mentor and am thrilled to have her as fellow faculty member.”

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Northrup!