Meet Our Team
Disseminating trustworthy information about ADHD Science takes a team
Disseminating trustworthy information about ADHD Science takes a team
Joel Nigg is a nationally recognized researcher with more than 200 scientific publications and work that has been cited in the literature over 15,000 times. His newest book, What Science Tells Us about Autism Spectrum Disorder will be released in January 2020. His second book on ADHD, Getting Ahead of ADHD: What Next-Generation Science Says about Treatments That Work-and How You Can Make Them Work for Your Child, was released in August 2017. He authored one previous book in 2006, “ADHD: What Goes Wrong and Why” which was aimed at students and professionals, which addressed the causes of ADHD.
Since 2008 he has been Director of the Division of Psychology and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at Oregon Health and Science University. He directs OHSU’s ADHD Program, conducts large-scale federally funded research into the roots of ADHD, supervises clinical evaluations of children, trains residents, fellows, and post-doctoral students, and consults with clinicians and families.
Dr. Nigg’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1998. He serves on numerous scientific journal editorial boards and has received several awards for his work. His research has been most known for describing neuropsychological characteristics of ADHD, for relating ADHD to variations in temperament and personality, and for helping to describe the variations in ADHD. He has also contributed to research relating ADHD to negative dietary effects and to environmental toxicants, particularly low level, population-typical lead exposure.
He grew up in northeast Iowa and obtained his BA at Harvard where he studied Religion and Psychology. He then spent four years in public service, working in inner city Detroit, working first with homeless former psychiatric patients for a year and then three years at a youth center for children and teenagers in the inner city. After completing a Masters in Social Work at The University of Michigan and spending a year conducting outpatient psychotherapy with children and families in Jackson, Michigan, he spent three years as a psychiatric social worker on an adult inpatient psychiatric unit at the University of Michigan Hospitals. Increasingly interested in the early development of mental disorders, he obtained his Ph.D. at the University of California-Berkley in 1996 with a focus on child ADHD and associated learning and behavioral challenges. This included a one year clinical internship at Seattle Children’s Hospital and the University of Washington. From 1996-2008, he was on the faculty in clinical psychology at Michigan State University, where he conducted research on causes and correlates of ADHD, trained clinical psychologists in child assessment, taught undergraduate classes, and supervised clinical services focusing on psychological and diagnostic evaluation of children, as well as serving briefly as Director of the Clinical Psychology PhD Program there.
Hanna Lyubinina is a graduate from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, with a B.A. in Psychology, Mathematics, and Computer Science. She has a few years of technical experience in web design and coding, as well as an interest in networking and entrepreneurial innovation. After getting involved with the Oregon Health & Science University as a volunteer researcher, she became excited about the direction of current psychological research and wants to share valuable information with others. She also wants to help people distinguish trustworthy studies from biased ones. Currently, she works as a Research Assistant in the ADHD Research Study, and researches ADHD in children and adults for Dr. Joel Nigg’s blog and social media.
No information on this site substitutes for professional medical advice. Dr. Nigg is unable to answer all questions submitted and will never give individual medical recommendations without a full evaluation.
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