Karestan Koenen, PhD

Karestan C. Koenen, PhD is an Assistant Professor at Harvard School of Public Health. She is a licensed clinical psychologist with expertise and experience in developmental psychology and psychiatric epidemiology and is currently PI of an NIMH funded Career Development (K08) Award that uses a developmental epidemiologic approach to examining the joint action of genotype and childhood environment in the etiology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other stress-related mental disorders. Her work has focused on understanding the role of genetic and environmental risk factors in the development of PTSD and its comorbidity with psychiatric and substance use disorders. She is currently conducting a family- based association study aimed at identifying polymorphisms associated with onset and course of post-traumatic psychopathology using a genotype by environment interaction framework. Dr. Koenen is also an experienced clinician, specializing in empirically-validated short-term treatments for PTSD.