Dear Staff, Fellows, Residents, and Colleagues,
As you may recall, the Department, in partnership with BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute and the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, has been engaged in a recruitment process for a full-time academic faculty position in the area of youth depression. This opportunity was created for Psychiatry through the Faculty of Medicine Academic Renewal Program, intended to support the recruitment of tenure-stream faculty in Translational Science and Medicine.
Now that the recruitment process has been completed, I am delighted to announce that Dr. Tamara Vanderwal has been appointed as an Assistant Professor, Tenure Track, as of April 1, 2024. I believe many of you are already well acquainted with Dr. Vanderwal, a child psychiatrist based at BC Children’s Hospital and clinician scientist leading the Naturalistic Neuroimaging Lab. Prior to moving into her new tenure track appointment, she has held an Assistant Professor (Partner) appointment in the UBC Department of Psychiatry since 2018.
As a new tenure-stream faculty member, Dr. Vanderwal will develop a precision psychiatry research program to identify, characterize, and validate biomarkers to inform personalized care for high-complexity psychiatric youth with depression who are at higher risk of substance use, low social functioning, recurrent depression in adulthood, and suicide. She will also continue to build upon her innovative line of research using fMRI to study complex patterns of brain function under naturalistic conditions in child psychiatric disorders.
Dr. Vanderwal has been the recipient of several notable awards, including the UBC Health Innovation Funding Investment (HIFI) Award and the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF) Infrastructure Award, and was named among Brain Canada’s Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research. I am confident that, in joining our tenure-track faculty, she will continue to be successful as she embarks on this exciting chapter of her career. Please join me in warmly congratulating Dr. Vanderwal and welcoming her to her new academic appointment in the Department.
Sincerely,
Dr. Lakshmi N. Yatham, MBBS, FRCPC, MRCPsych (UK), MBA (Exec)
Professor and Head, UBC Department of Psychiatry
Director, Institute of Mental Health, UBC
Regional Head and Program Medical Director, VCH/PHC
The UBC Department of Psychiatry Administration Office respectfully acknowledges the land on which we live, work and play is the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-waututh).