Dr. Gerry Giesbrecht
Professor
Professor
Adjunct Professor
Director
PhD - Psychology
MA - Psychology
BA (Hons) - Psychology
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Biography
I am a registered Clinical Psychologist in the province of Alberta and Associate Professor in the Departments of Paediatrics and Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary. My research program focuses on the psychobiology of stress, and especially on the effects of stress during pregnancy on child development. I am currently studying the effects of risk and resilience factors, such as adverse childhood experiences, nutrition, temperament, and the gut microbiota on children’s neurodevelopment and mental health outcomes. My research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the SickKids Foundation, the Weston Foundation, and the Alberta Children's Hospital Foundation. I am the lead investigator of the Fetal Programming study, a cohort of 294 women who have been followed since early pregnancy and with whom he conducted intensive assessment of stress physiology. I am a co-investigator of the Alberta Pregnancy Outcomes and Nutrition (APrON) study, a longitudinal cohort of 2200 women and children that focusses on the effects of prenatal nutrition on maternal mental health and child neurodevelopment. I am also a Co-PI of the Pregnancy During the COVID-19 Pandemic (PdP) study, a longitudinal cohort of >10,000 pregnant individuals and babies born during the pandemic, with the goal of understanding the social and psychological implications of the pandemic on families, and associations with stress biomarkers and the gut microbiota. The overall objectives of my research program are: to identify the mechanisms by which early life exposure to stress becomes biologically embedded in children’s development, to identify risk and resilience factors that modify the effects of early life stress exposure on children’s development, and to develop effective intervention and prevention strategies to prevent or reduce the effects of early life stress exposure on children’s development.