Freda Liu

Personal Statement

My research focuses on strategies to improve pediatric mental health care quality, such as increasing measurement-based care–the use of patient/caregiver reported data to inform clinical-decision making. I also study the impact of quality improvement interventions on pediatric mental health service disparities with the goal of developing interventions to prevent or reduce such disparities and improving mental health care quality for all youths and families.

My clinical expertise includes Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Cognitive Behavior Therapy for teens and families to address a variety of mood and anxiety disorders as well as behavior problems and parent-child conflict. I provide parent training and consultation for managing young children’s anxiety and behavior problems. I am fluent in Mandarin Chinese.

Arthur Lewy

Personal Statement

Dr. Lewy maintains a practice with immigrants and refugees at Harborview Hospital.  Core practice specialties include assessment, forensics, disability, cross cultural psychology, and clinical child psychology.  Core academic interests include anthropological and sociological perspectives on mental illness. ​ 

Kathleen Lehman

Personal Statement

Dr. Kathleen Lehman works at the Center on Human Development and Disability (CHDD) in the Child Development Clinic, Down Syndrome Specialty Clinic, Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Clinic, and the Infant Development Follow-Up Clinic as a licensed psychologist conducting neurodevelopmental evaluations and supervising the psychology residents and postdoctoral fellows completing evaluations of children with suspected neurodevelopmental disorders.​ She is the Associate Director of the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and related Disabilities (LEND) located that the CHDD.

Jack McClellan

Personal Statement

I am a Professor in the Division of Child Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, at the University of Washington, and the Medical Director of Child Study and Treatment Center, the State Hospital for children and adolescents in Washington State. My primary research focus addresses the genetics of neuropsychiatric disorders.  Our research supports that a substantial portion of neuropsychiatric disease, including schizophrenia and autism, stems from individually rare deleterious mutations in genes important for brain development. My clinical research addresses the diagnosis and treatment of early-onset psychotic illnesses.  I authored the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s diagnostic and treatment guidelines for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.   

Aaron Lyon

Personal Statement

My research focuses on increasing the accessibility, efficiency, and effectiveness of community- and school-based interventions for children, adolescents, and families. I am particularly interested in (1) the identification and implementation of low-cost, high-yield practices – such as the use of measurement-based care – to reduce the gap between typical and optimal practice in schools; (2) development of individual- and organization-level implementation strategies to promote adoption and sustainment of evidence-based psychosocial interventions within a multi-tier systems of support (MTSS) framework; and (3) human-centered design (and redesign) of psychosocial and digital technologies to improve their implementability, accessibility, and effectiveness. I am the founder and Director of the School Mental Health Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART) Center, dually housed in UW’s School of Medicine and College of Education.

Ian Kodish

Personal Statement

I have expertise in managing acute psychiatric presentations with research experience in studying neuroanatomy and the synaptic effects of schizophrenia. I have published in fields of neuroscience, schizophrenia, autism, and anxiety disorders. I also actively manage a telepsychiatry clinic based in eastern WA, and coordinate psychiatric management of emergency room mental health evaluations. I am very interested in the education of residents and fellows rotating on the consultation service, and participating in educational curriculum and recruitment committees.

Soo-Jeong Kim

Personal Statement

I am board-certified in general psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry. I primarily work at Seattle Children’s Autism Center, where I participate in autism diagnostic assessments, evaluations and management of psychiatric/behavioral comorbidities among children and teens with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and/or related neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD).  I also work at Seattle Children’s Interdisciplinary Clinic for Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), where I enjoy collaborating with national experts on PWS. My academic passion is to help support the professional development of our general psychiatry residents and child psychiatry fellows in their training and education in ASD and NDD.

Gretchen Gudmundsen

Personal Statement

Dr. Gudmundsen works at Seattle Children’s with a focus on adolescents with mood disorders. She is based in the Mood and Anxiety Program and mostly works with adolescents with depression and suicidality, in addition to anxiety and bipolar spectrum disorders. This work almost always involves parents and families, in addition to other key players such as teachers or medical providers. She typically administers BA, CAMS, or CBT, but also does some IPSRT with youth with mania. In addition to serving as the Child Track Training Coordinator for the UW Psychology Internship, she is also an outpatient supervisor for Psychology Residents and Postdoctoral Fellows. She also provides consultation to the Child Psychiatry Fellows, Medical Students and to School-Based Mental Health Therapists in the Seattle Public Schools. She is involved with program development for trainees, as well as the Mood and Anxiety Specialty Program. Her research focuses on developing and tailoring interventions for adolescent depression, including the Adolescent Behavioral Activation Program (A-BAP).

Jennifer Gerdts

Personal Statement

My primary research and clinical interests are in the diagnosis and etiology of autism. I am passionate about teaching and training in autism and developmental disabilities, and improving access to care and building community capacity for this population. I am the director of the Clinical Training Unit at the Institute on Human Development and Disability (IHDD), and direct the UW Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and related Disabilities (LEND) program. I am also the track coordinator for the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Psychology Internship training program and an attending psychologist at the Seattle Children’s Autism Center where I conduct diagnostic evaluations for autism and supervise a variety of trainees. I am investigating various methods for diagnosis in an effort to streamline the process and decrease wait times for an initial diagnostic evaluation for autism. I am involved in implementing and evaluating several Project ECHO programs at IHDD with primary care providers in Washington State, with a goal of improving access to autism-related care closer to home. In the past, I was part of research examining the genetic landscape of autism in order to create meaningful subtypes of the disorder, with a hope of individualizing treatments for people with autism in the future.