メンバー

ニュージーランドにあるオタゴ大学において心理学博士号取得及び臨床心理士資格取得。病院において臨床心理士として従事した後、オタゴ大学心理学部課程及び修士課程で成人及び児童心理の基礎やアセスメント、介入について授業を担当。ADHDの原因や支援の理解に重点を置いた研究を行い、多くの学部生、修士学生、及び博士学生を指導した。2007年にOISTに着任。発達神経生物学ユニット・こども研究所を立ち上げ、教授となる。英語と日本語を母国語とする子供たちやその家族の方々からのご協力を得ながらADHDの特性や支援についての研究を続けている。

発達神経生物学ユニット・こども研究所の設立当初からADHDの研究に携わっています。

米国ジョージメイソン大学で臨床心理学博士号を取得、児童臨床心理の研修を受け、バージニア州臨床心理士の資格を持っています。脳イメージ研究や行動研究を行うと同時に、基礎研究から得た知識を親子や地域のサポートにつなげていくため、モバイルを活用した子育て支援ツールやアニメーション教材、コミュニティでの学びの場などの支援プログラム（らぶはび♡）の開発・試験を実施しています。特に、報酬や罰に対する反応の特性に合ったこどもたちとの関わり方の工夫や、リソースをつなげる社会の仕組み作りを、地域の皆さんと一緒に発見していきたいと考えています。私たちの研究や活動が発達の多様性の理解や支援の改善、そして多くの家族のサポートにつながることを願っています。

言語：日本語、英語

らぶはび: プログラム・イベント ♡ 研究 ♡ インスタ

Catherine Williams, PhD, Staff Scientist

My role within the Tripp Unit is to guide the assessment and diagnosis of our wonderful volunteers! I am a clinical neuropsychologist by training, having completed a PhD in Clinical Psychology at Idaho State University in 2017 and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuropsychology at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in 2019. I have been working with the Tripp Unit since 2022 and continue to maintain an active license to practice psychology in the state of Vermont.

My clinical interests are broad, ranging from ADHD to movement disorders to intractable epilepsy. I love my clinical work, but I have always been fascinated by research that explores how our brains regulate desire and reward. In the Unit, I get to enjoy both!

My contribution here in the Tripp unit and at the CRC involves completing cognitive and academic assessments with the great kids who participate in our research! I have a passion for working with kids and love being able to play a role in the exciting research that is being conducted here at OIST. I hold an Educational Specialist degree in School Psychology from George Fox University. Prior to joining the assessment team here at the Children’s Research Center, I worked as a School Psychologist in a variety of US public schools, including rural, urban and remote settings. In my free time, I love exploring Okinawa with my husband and two daughters, especially beach combing to look for sea glass!

I am a certified clinical psychologist in Japan and a research fellow at OIST. My research focuses on developing tools to measure how children respond to rewards and punishments, with the aim of guiding families in establishing behavioral support approaches tailored to their children's needs. I received my PhD in Human Science from Waseda University in Japan. I am thrilled to be part of the vibrant research environment at OIST, where I can collaborate with inspiring colleagues and contribute to advancing knowledge in my field. I am also passionate about translating my research findings into meaningful practices that benefit society, starting with the Okinawan community and beyond.

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Human Developmental Neurobiology unit and the Children’s Research Center at OIST, under the supervision of Prof. dr. Gail Tripp. My research focuses on altered sensitivity to reward and punishment in children with ADHD. In my research, I focus mostly on experimental paradigms to investigate this altered sensitivity, using both behavioral and physiological outcome measures. 

I am trained both as a clinical and experimental psychologist, and have an additional degree in statistics and data science. I received my PhD in psychology in November 2023 at the KU Leuven in Belgium, after which I came to OIST to start as a postdoctoral fellow in January 2024. 

Publications (google scholar) | LinkedIn 

A neurobiologist by training, I earned my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland, and the University of Bonn, Germany, respectively. Having always had a great research interest in the nature and causes of ADHD, I first joined the Human Developmental Neurobiology Unit/Children’s Research Center as a research intern in 2019.

Currently a PhD student, at CRC I seek to advance the knowledge about children’s understanding of, and decision making during, social interactions.

I earned my Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego. I joined the Tripp Unit in 2022 and am currently a PhD candidate. My research focuses on sensitivity to reward-predictive cues in children with and without ADHD. I use a combination of behavioral paradigms and physiological measures - including eye-tracking and heart rate monitoring - to better understand the mechanisms underlying motivational processes in ADHD.

I am originally from Okinawa, and I am grateful to have started my PhD at OIST in 2024. I received my bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Tsukuba, where I studied sensory issues in individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders. My current research interest is sensitivity to reward-predicting cues in children with and without ADHD. I am fascinated by how a seemingly simple process - learning the link between a cue and a reward - may be key to unraveling individual differences in behavior.

Publications (google scholar) | LinkedIn | researchmap

Hend Samniya, Ph.D. Student

I’m a PhD candidate at OIST under the supervision of Professor Gail Tripp. I’m clinically trained as a speech and language therapist, and I’m also a licensed audiologist. In my master’s degree, I studied auditory neurophysiology using clinical electrophysiology methods to investigate central auditory processing in the brain. Before I joined the Tripp Unit, I worked in assessment and intervention with children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), and in auditory assessments and rehabilitation of people with hearing disorders. 

Since I joined the Unit, I conduct language and social functioning assessments as part of my studies on language and social communication in children with and without ADHD.