Dillon T. Browne: Pediatric Research Early Career Investigator Spotlight (July 2022).

I was born and raised in Burlington, Ontario, Canada, and completed my undergraduate studies in Psychology and Family & Child Studies at the University of Guelph. For graduate school, I did a master’s and PhD in School and Clinical Child Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, under the supervision of Dr Jenny Jenkins in the Developmental Psychopathology Laboratory. For residency and postdoctoral fellowship, I moved to California and trained in the Clinical Psychology Training Program, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where my primary mentor was Dr Alicia Lieberman. My training here included major rotations in the Child Trauma Research Program and Intensive Family Therapy Program. I briefly taught at the California School of Professional Psychology, San Francisco, before returning to Canada. Presently, I am an Assistant Professor and the Canada Research Chair in Child and Family Clinical Psychology at the University of Waterloo’s Department of Psychology in Waterloo, Ontario. I am also a registered child and family clinical psychologist in the province of Ontario and have a small clinical practice.

The major influences on my choice of career were my father (a psychiatric social worker and lifelong public servant) and mother (a professor of nursing and family therapist). I first became interested in pediatrics while studying developmental psychology as an undergraduate and learned about the social determinants of health. My first research project examined the relationship between parenting practices and children’s mental health using the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth in Canada. During this project, I was exposed to the vast literature demonstrating the impact of early childhood adversity and trauma on human development, which solidified my career choice in child clinical psychology.

I have been very fortunate to receive exceptionally high-quality mentorship from numerous scientists and practitioners, including Karl Hennig, Heidi Bailey, Michael Grand, and Harvey Marmurek (University of Guelph), Jenny Jenkins, Judy Weiner, Mary Caravias, Brendan Andrade, Ken Zucker, and Alice Charach (University of Toronto), Lehana Thabane, Maria Wong, and Carolyn Byrne (McMaster University), Alicia Lieberman, Nancy Compton, Miriam Dimmler, Sheening Lin, Keith Armstrong, Amy Busch, Teo Ernst, and Sarah Crouch (UCSF), and Marjory Phillips, David Moscovitch, Mike Dixon, Colin McLeod, Heather Henderson, Mark Ferro, and David Seljak (University of Waterloo). I am also fortunate to have an extensive network of peer mentorship in the Canadian academy, including Mark Wade, Heather Prime, Sheri Madigan, Nicole Racine, Brae McArthur, and Andre Plamondon.

The best advice I have for early career investigators was once given to me by a senior scientist. That is, “begin with the question.” It sounds obvious. However, as an advisor of junior research students today, I am often reminded how easy it is to lose sight of the foundational questions that inform the research enterprise. In addition to this, I would say “think about the life you want, and let the details work themselves out.” Looking back, I could not have predicted where my training and employment would occur. However, I knew I wanted to be an investigator in children’s mental health for the purpose of improving the human condition through the scientific method. There have been many wonderful surprises along the way!