Charisse Pickron, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute of Child Development (ICD) who will be joining the faculty as an assistant professor in Fall 2021, and Michelle Desir, PhD, an ICD alumna, have been named mentors as part of the Society for Research in Child Development’s Towards 2044: Horowitz Early Career Scholar Program.

The Towards 2044: Horowitz Early Career Scholar Program, formerly known as the Frances Degen Horowitz Millennium Scholars Program, offers educational and professional development opportunities for scholars from underrepresented groups. As part of the program, scholars are paired with mentors, who will offer guidance and mentorship through a series of monthly seminars and one-on-one meetings through December 2021. 

Dr. Pickron investigates the way early experience shapes infants’ engagement with their social world. Her work sits at an intersection of perceptual and socio-cognitive perspectives as means for examining social information processing in early development, emphasizing questions about race and gender. Dr. Pickron utilizes an interdisciplinary approach that includes behavioral and neurophysiological techniques such as eye-tracking and EEG. Her goal is to conduct research using a diversity science approach, working toward increased representation and engagement with community, participants, research teams, and mentorship.

Dr. Desir, who earned a PhD in developmental psychology with a specialization in developmental psychopathology and clinical science from ICD in 2019, is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Child Abuse Pediatrics at Penn State Hershey Medical Center. She will join the University of South Carolina Department of Psychology as an assistant professor in August 2022. Her research focuses on delineating risk and protective factors that influence the developmental trajectory of maltreated children.