2017 Kaufman-Repage Lecture: Catherine Monk

The 2017 Kaufman-Repage Lecture, hosted by Wagner College, featured Columbia University Medical Center researcher Catherine Monk speaking on “Pregnant Women’s Mental Health Matters: For Her, and Her Baby.”
CATHERINE MONK is a professor of medical psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and Ob/Gyn at the Columbia University Medical Center Women’s Program, and a research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Her research focuses on the earliest influences on children’s developmental trajectories - those that happen in utero - and how to intervene early to prevent mental health disorders in the future.
Originally trained as a clinical psychologist treating children and adults in a program that emphasized the developmental origins of psychopathology, Monk completed her postdoctoral research training in psychobiological sciences via a National Institutes of Health fellowship at Columbia University in 2000, joining the faculty there a year later.
A two-time recipient of the prestigious Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Young Investigator Award, her research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health since she first obtained support as an NIH ‘K’ Career Development awardee in 2001.
Monk is internationally recognized for her contributions to the developmental origins of health and disease research model. Most recently, Dr. Monk has been awarded key roles on the NIH-wide ECHO project - Environmental Influences on Children’s Health Outcomes - a 7-year, nationwide effort to study early factors, including prenatal factors, in children’s health outcomes across 50,000 participants.
THE KAUFMAN-REPAGE LECTURE, a celebration of Wagner College’s commitment to scholarly work and open inquiry, is sponsored by former Wagner College trustee Dr. Louise S. Kaufman ’75 M’78 H’12 and her husband, Dr. Peter Kaufman. They established the lecture series in 2006 with the goal of bringing noted speakers to campus and the community. Past speakers have included former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins; Ken Jackson, professor of history and social science at Columbia University; Rebecca Skloot, author of the award-winning book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”; Bonnie Bassler, Squibb Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University and a 2002 MacArthur Fellow; Joel Kotkin, author of “The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050,” and Bruce Chadwick, Rutgers scholar of American history and former Daily News sports writer.