Giorgia Picci, PhD
Director, CANDY Laboratory, Boys Town National Research Hospital
Assistant Clinical Professor, Creighton UniversityPostdoctoral Fellow – Boys Town National Research Hospital (2023)
Postdoctoral Fellow – Pennsylvania State University (2021)
PhD – Developmental Psychology, Pennsylvania State University (2018)
BA – Psychology, George Mason University (2012)
Giorgia Picci, PhD, is the Director of the Cognitive Affective Neurodevelopment in Youth (CANDY) Laboratory at the Institute for Human Neuroscience. Dr. Picci is a developmental neuroscientist interested in how early life experiences (e.g., child abuse, neglect, discrimination) shape neurodevelopment and mental health outcomes. She has authored over 15 peer-reviewed publications, featured in premier outlets such as PNAS, Psychological Science, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, and Neuroimage. Her work emphasizes examining multiple levels of biology to answer her research questions, including hormones, s/fMRI, and MEG.
During her PhD at Penn State University, her work was among the first to demonstrate that puberty impacts the human visuoperceptual system; in her NSF-funded work, she showed that pubertal development induces a shift toward enhanced processing of peer faces. As a post-doc, Dr. Picci’s research focused on 1) normative patterns of neurodevelopment, including effects of pubertal hormones and 2) how early life stress may modify neurodevelopmental trajectories and risk for psychopathology. Her research lab is currently focused on integrating these questions to understand how the confluence of childhood trauma and pubertal development impacts adolescents’ neural structure and function as well as adaptation to life.
