Kelly Caravella
Kelly Caravella, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities within the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Dr. Caravella’s work bridges clinical practice and implementation science. Her clinical expertise centers on autism assessment and diagnosis, with a specialty in the early developmental period, and the assessment of children with neurogenetic syndromes. Her independent program of research focuses on reducing delays in autism diagnosis and intervention by applying mixed methods, and stakeholder-engaged approaches, with an emphasis on improving public health and clinical systems of care.
Hannah Riehl
Hannah Riehl is the Clinical Trials Program Manager at the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities, where she oversees a portfolio of interventional and observational studies focused on Angelman Syndrome. She leads cross-functional teams and manages complex trial operations across multiple protocols. She is serving as the temporary project manager for the ARIA IMPACT Center at UNC for this meeting while the incoming project manager is on maternity leave.
Mark Shen
I am a translational neuroscientist and tenured Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina in Psychiatry, Neuroscience, and the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities (CIDD), where I am the founding Director of the CIDD Clinical Trials Program. The goal of our lab is to identify early biological markers and therapeutic targets for neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), including autism, fragile X, Down syndrome, Rett syndrome, Dup15q, and Angelman syndrome. This research spans the translational pipeline, bridging clinical research, preclinical models, and clinical trials. We conduct longitudinal neuroimaging and deep phenotyping of infants to identify the earliest brain features and clinical symptoms of NDDs. We then collaborate with preclinical scientists to reverse-translate these pediatric neuroimaging findings into mechanistic studies using animal and cellular models. Since launching the CIDD Clinical Trials Program in 2018, we have built a team of physicians and clinical trialists to advance genetic medicine trials for children with NDDs. I serve as PI of two Phase 1/2a clinical trials delivering antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) in children with Angelman syndrome to reactivate the silenced genetic allele. Before my research career, I worked for six years as an early intervention behavioral therapist for children with autism.
Heather Ward
Heather Ward is a Senior Clinical Research Coordinator and has had a career in academic medical research since 2014. She has experience in neurology, neurosurgery, psychology, and neurosciences. She is certified by ACRP as CCRC, is a registered paramedic, has a bachelor’s in Psychology and will be finishing her master’s degree in clinical research in the fall of 2027. Her passion is creating the best experience possible for her participants, advocating for research, and human subjects protections. She enjoys gardening, baking, and legos with her sons and taking mini vacations with her husband when possible!
Kai Xia
Dr. Kai Xia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine and the Director of the Psychiatry Data Management and Biostatistics Core. He is a biostatistician and bioinformatician specializing in statistical genetics, multi‑omics integration, and machine learning applications to psychiatric health research. His work focuses on understanding how genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors shape mental health. Dr. Xia collaborates widely across Psychiatry, Genetics, and Biostatistics, serving as a key scientific and analytic resource for multi‑disciplinary projects and as a mentor to junior investigators.
Jessica Girault
Jessica Girault is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities in the University of North Carolina’s School of Medicine. Dr. Girault is a developmental neuroscientist with more than a decade of experience working on large-scale, longitudinal pediatric studies. She has an active program of research on brain and behavioral development in autism and related neurogenetic syndromes.
Gabriel Dichter
Dr. Gabriel Dichter is a licensed clinical psychologist, a tenured Professor of Psychiatry at UNC-Chapel Hill, the Associate Director for Research at the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities, and the Director of the P50-funded UNC Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC). His research focuses on investigating neural mechanisms of core symptoms and treatment response in autism spectrum disorder and mood disorders using MR and molecular neuroimaging.
He completed T32-funded pre-doctoral training in developmental psychophysiology at Vanderbilt University, and then K23-funded training at UNC with Dr. Joseph Piven in functional neuroimaging in the context of autism clinical trials. He has been PI of numerous NIMH and foundation grants focused on neuroimaging in clinical populations, including multiple grants examining predictors of response to treatment using neuroimaging. He has served on numerous NIH study sections and working groups, has published over 110 articles, and maintains a clinical practice at the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities.