Thursday, April 30, 2026
8:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Join mental health professionals, educators, and community leaders as they explore critical challenges and strategies to support the well-being of children, adolescents, and families. This year’s program will explore the relationship between social media, loneliness, and the evolving role of parents and caregivers in supporting youth in an online world.
Dr. Lee joined Weill Cornell Medicine’s faculty in 2002 and in 2018 was named Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychiatrist-in-Chief at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Dr. Lee is an accomplished neurobiologist and psychiatrist studying the molecular basis of mood and anxiety disorders, intending to understand why many of them emerge during the transition from childhood to adolescence. By combining basic and translational approaches, Dr. Lee’s discoveries have led to the development of advanced biologically targeted psychiatric diagnostic tools and treatments. Dr. Lee has served on several boards at the National Institutes of Health and national mental health foundations and has received numerous honors, including election to the National Academy of Medicine.
Mitchell Prinstein, PhD, ABPP, is the John Van Seters Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Senior Science Advisor of the American Psychological Association.
For over 25 years, and with continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health, Mitchell’s research has examined interpersonal models of internalizing symptoms and health risk behaviors among adolescents, with a specific focus on the unique role of offline and online peer relationships in the developmental psychopathology of depression and self-injury. He is a board-certified clinical psychologist and has published over 250 scientific manuscripts and 12 books.
Mitchell has advised/consulted with numerous government agencies (e.g., White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Centers for Disease Control, Federal Trade Commission, U.S. Surgeon General’s Office, U.S. Supreme Court); international agencies (e.g., Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Economic Forum, World Health Organization); nonprofits (e.g., Common Sense Media, The National PTA); institutes (e.g., National Institute of Mental Health, National Academies of Science); as well as for-profit industries (e.g., Google, Apple, Johnson & Johnson); as well as the entertainment industry (e.g., David E. Kelley Productions, Impact Guild).
At APA, Mitchell served as Chief Science Officer and then Chief of Psychology. As Chief Science Officer, Mitchell was responsible for leading the association’s science agenda and advocating for the application of psychological research and knowledge in settings including academia, government, industry, and the law. As Chief of Psychology, Mitchell led the integration of APA’s work in science, practice, education, and applied psychology. Prior to APA, Mitchell served as the Director of Clinical Psychology at UNC and Yale University, the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, and the Assistant Dean for Honors Carolina, the honors program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Mitchell is regularly featured as an expert in psychological science as a repeat witness testifying before the U.S. Senate, in two TedX, and within hundreds of media appearances around the world in outlets such as The New York Times, NPR, 60 Minutes, the Times (UK), and CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC.
Robert Moon is a social worker who has spent all of his career working on mental health system reform, focusing on issues of access, equity, fiscal viability, cultural humility, and the comprehensiveness and quality of community services. He started his career in Washington, D.C., at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, as the Coordinator of a federal court-ordered implementation monitoring committee that oversaw the planning and establishment of a system of services that is more community-driven and focused on recipients and family members. This included the expansion of community housing, establishment of the first Assertive Community Treatment teams in the District, and a full array of other services and supports.
He then moved to New York City where he worked for 17 years at the NYC Health + Hospitals Corporation in the Office of Behavioral Health. H+H is a public benefit corporation and the nation’s largest public hospital system. It includes 11 acute care hospitals, comprehensive psychiatric emergency programs, and a vast array of outpatient behavioral health services, including 12 Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams, and multiple mental health and substance use clinics.
At the Office of Behavioral Health, he worked on quality improvement initiatives, fiscal viability, implementation of the Epic EHR, crisis services, and, most importantly, the inclusion of peers as staff on inpatient acute care units, and in clinics and emergency services.
In 2015, he joined the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) as the Director of the New York City Field Office and now serves as its Deputy Commissioner of Community Services, overseeing the program and managed care policy aspects of the OMH statewide community system—including treatment, crisis stabilization, housing, homeless services such as the Safe Options Support program, psychiatric rehabilitation, and other services OMH offers to promote a recovery-oriented system for all New Yorkers across the lifespan.
Michael Orth, who has worked in the human services sector for over 36 years, joined the Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health (DCMH) in 1993 and was appointed Commissioner in January 2018, after serving as Deputy Commissioner from 2009 to 2017. The Department of Community Mental Health, a branch of county government, is responsible for planning, oversight, education, and coordination of services and supports for individuals and their families with mental illness, developmental/intellectual disabilities, and substance use challenges. Under the general direction of the County Executive and in accordance with New York State Mental Hygiene Laws, Michael serves as Chief Executive Officer and is responsible for the operation and administration of the department.
In 2020, Michael was appointed by the governor to serve on the New York State Behavioral Health Services Advisory Council. In June 2025, he was appointed to the New York State Opioid Settlement Board by New York State Senate Majority Leader the Honorable Andrea Stewart-Cousins, upon the recommendation of New York State Association of Counties (NYSAC). Michael serves as First Vice Chair of the New York State Conference of Local Mental Hygiene Directors (NYS CLMHDS) Executive Board and was appointed by the NYS Office of Mental Health to the Daniel’s Law Task Force. Locally, Michael serves as Co-Chair of the Westchester County Opioid Response and Overdose Prevention Initiative (ORI) and of Westchester County’s Coordinated Children’s Services Initiative (CCSI) Planning Committee.
He has held several positions in Children’s Mental Health Services at DCMH since 1993, assisting in the development of Westchester County’s system of care for children with emotional, social, and behavioral challenges and their families. This includes collaborating with other child-serving systems at the federal, state, and county levels.
Michael graduated from the Iona College BSW program and from Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service with an MSW.
Michael was the recipient of the New York state office of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill's Dr. Lew Opler Award in 2023 and the New York State Office of Mental Health’s What’s Great in our State Lifetime Achievement Award in 2024.
Joshua A. Gordon, MD, PhD, is the Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. This is his second stint at Columbia, having been a member of the faculty from 2004 to 2016, where he conducted research, taught students and residents, and maintained a general psychiatry practice. Immediately prior to rejoining Columbia, Dr. Gordon served as the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) from 2016 until 2024, where he oversaw the principal U.S. government agency responsible for mental health research. Dr. Gordon received MD and PhD degrees in neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco, and completed a psychiatry residency and research fellowship at Columbia University prior to joining the faculty in 2004.
Dr. Gordon’s research employs an integrative systems approach toward understanding the neurobiology underlying working memory and its disruption by genes of relevance to schizophrenia. Utilizing a range of modern neuroscience techniques, including in vivo neurophysiology and optical and pharmacological circuit manipulation, his lab has demonstrated a crucial role for oscillatory neural dynamics in the long-range functional connectivity in the hippocampal-prefrontal circuit in rodents. Through studying mice carrying mutations that, in humans, confer risk for schizophrenia, he has developed and tested causal hypotheses for how genetic variants confer risk for disease. By disrupting these processes and then testing pharmacological and neuromodulatory approaches to reversing this disruption, his work has laid the groundwork for potential translation.
Dr. Gordon is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. His work has been recognized by several prestigious awards, including the NARSAD Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation; the Rising Star Award from the International Mental Health Research Organization; the A.E. Bennett Research Award from the Society of Biological Psychiatry; and the Daniel H. Efron Research Award from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.
Shannon Bennett, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Psychology in Clinical Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and an Attending Psychologist at NewYork-Presbyterian. Dr. Bennett serves as the Clinical Director of the NYP Center for Youth Mental Health and the Director of the Center of Excellence for Tourette Syndrome at NYP/Weill Cornell. As a licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Bennett works with children, adolescents, adults, and families suffering from anxiety, tics, OCD, and related conditions. She also teaches, writes, and presents internationally on these topics. She has published scores of peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and treatment manuals or workbooks, and is frequently an invited speaker at professional conferences, community events, and in media interviews on mental health.
Dr. Bennett’s primary research interests include the development, evaluation, and dissemination of cognitive behavioral treatments for anxiety, mood, OCD, and tic disorders; testing the efficacy of novel treatments for these disorders; and better understanding mechanisms involved in symptom change. Dr. Bennett’s experience in treatment development, evaluation, and dissemination has also been applied to areas of important public health impact, including how social media and AI use interact with mental health. She is also committed to training psychologists, psychiatrists, and other care professionals in cognitive-behavioral interventions to improve access to these treatment approaches for youth with anxiety and related impairments.
Dr. Bennett contributed to several cognitive-behavioral treatment and research programs at the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University, and was a Co-Founder and Associate Director of the Pediatric OCD Intensive Treatment Program at UCLA before joining the faculty at Weill Cornell Medicine in 2010. Dr. Bennett also led a multidisciplinary research team focused on the psychosocial needs of women who experience perinatal loss, and she earned a National Research Service Award for this research effort. Dr. Bennett has been honored with a Career Development Leadership Award from the Anxiety and Depression Association of America and serves on the Medical Advisory Board for the Tourette Association of America, as well as on several national and international working groups on matters of import to youth mental health.
Amandeep Jutla is an Associate Research Scientist in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University. He attended medical school at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, followed by an adult psychiatry residency at UCLA Medical Center and the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. He subsequently trained in child and adolescent psychiatry at Northwestern University and the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago before undertaking research training at Columbia as a Whitaker Scholar in Developmental Neuropsychiatry and as a T32 Fellow in Translational Child Psychiatry. He has received research support from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Columbia Institute for Developmental Sciences. Much of his work is focused on psychosis risk in autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, and he currently leads a K23-funded project that leverages genetics to understand the autism and schizophrenia intersection. He has also developed a line of research investigating how large language model chatbots and other AI products intersect with psychiatric risk in both autistic and neurotypical populations.
Yunyu Xiao, PhD , is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences and the Department of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, where she directs the X_PLORE Lab. Her research program applies computational methods, including machine learning, natural language processing, and causal inference, to large-scale datasets to advance youth suicide prevention and understand the role of social determinants of health in shaping mental health outcomes.
Dr. Xiao’s work on addictive screen use trajectories and youth suicidal behaviors, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), has informed both scientific discourse and public policy, including advisory contributions to the Swedish government on youth mental health and screen time. Her research has also appeared in JAMA Psychiatry, JAMA Pediatrics, and Nature Mental Health, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian.
With over 90 peer-reviewed publications, 3,300+ citations, and more than $2.8 million in funding as PI from the NIH, the Google Research Scholar Program, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Dr. Xiao is a recognized leader at the intersection of artificial intelligence and youth mental health. She serves on NIH study sections, co-leads the Academy Health Mental Health and Substance Use Research Interest Group, and is an elected Associate Member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. She teaches graduate courses in health informatics at Weill Cornell Medicine and holds a PhD from New York University.
Dr. Paul Alexander Bloom is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Neurobiology (in Psychiatry) and Herbert Pardes Scholar at Columbia University, where he completed his PhD in psychology. His research focuses on leveraging digital technologies to identify adolescents at risk for depression and suicide, including high-risk youth visiting pediatric emergency departments for acute suicide concerns. He applies longitudinal methods such as smartphone-based passive sensing, experience-sampling surveys, and youth “data donation” from platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and ChatGPT to model within-person changes in affect and behavior. His work includes interdisciplinary collaborations spanning psychiatry, pediatric emergency medicine, and computer science in efforts to inform clinical interventions and policy recommendations that support vulnerable youth and prevent suicide.
Dr. Wilner is Senior Vice President of NewYork-Presbyterian, leading behavioral health services across all NewYork-Presbyterian campuses. He is the Chief Operating Officer of NewYork-Presbyterian Westchester Behavioral Health, a 250-bed psychiatric and addiction facility in White Plains, New York, and President and Chief Executive Officer of Gracie Square Hospital, a 140-bed psychiatric hospital located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. In these dual roles, Dr. Wilner’s work involves the provision of comprehensive and personalized behavioral health services across the entire diagnostic and socioeconomic spectrum at the highest levels of quality and patient experience.
Dr. Wilner is also Executive Vice Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Wilner joined the former New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center as a House Officer in 1983 and was the recipient of a DeWitt Wallace Research Fellowship in 1988, conducting studies in the biological bases of psychiatric illness. He is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a member of the New York Academy of Medicine and the New York Psychiatric Society.