Category: News

Zoo U Moved to Market by Personalized Learning Games

Social and emotional learning game Zoo U, developed by 3C Institute, is being moved to market by Personalized Learning Games (PLG), a company 3C Institute CEO Dr. Melissa DeRosier established to help educators assess and improve social and emotional learning skills for students with games. PLG has assembled an all-star team to achieve their goal of […]

Zoo U Nominated for International Award

Zoo U was nominated for an INDEX: Award —biennial design awards that recognize solutions created to improve others’ lives across the globe. The awards are held by INDEX: Design to Improve Life, a Danish nonprofit organization that helps other organizations design sustainable solutions to global challenges. It is under the patronage of the Crown Prince of Denmark […]

Zoo U Highlighted in Emotional Intelligence Talk

Jessica Berlinski, chief impact officer of Personalized Learning Games, discussed the positive impact that Zoo U has on children’s social-emotional skills during an Emotional Smarts Google+ Hangout. She was joined by Jeremy Richman, founder of The Avielle Foundation, and Carol Lloyd, executive editor at GreatSchools. The discussion focused on the ways that educators and parents […]

Zoo U Nominated for “Most Significant Impact” Award by Games for Change

Zoo U has been nominated for a Games for Change (G4C) Award in the category “Most Significant Impact.” The G4C Awards celebrate the year’s best digital games for change. Finalists were selected from a record 150 submissions. The category of “Most Significant Impact” honors games targeted at a specific social issue with proven actions and/or outcomes. […]

Zoo U Featured at IBM Conference

Zoo U was featured at the IBM conference InterConnect by Phaedra Boinodiris, Global Lead for Serious Games and Gamification at IBM, in front of 12,000 attendees. Phaedra is consistently recognized as an industry leader for achievement and performance in the serious games industry. She has been featured in Forbes and keynoted and chaired serious games summits worldwide, […]

3C Institute and Zoo U Highlighted by the Institute of Emerging Issues

3C Institute and Zoo U are featured in the Institute of Emerging Issues’ December newsletter. The Institute of Emerging Issues is a public policy organization that brings people together around complex issues such as education and health to ensure North Carolina’s future competitiveness. The newsletter focuses on social-emotional learning (SEL), including defining social-emotional health and linking […]

Zoo U and S.S.GRIN Featured in Article on Games and Learning

Jessica Berlinski, Chief Impact Officer of 3C Institute partner organization Personalized Learning Games (formerly Adaptive Health Systems), and Dr. Jeremy Richman, father of Avielle Rose who was tragically killed in Newtown, CT in 2012, have published an article titled “On Newtown Anniversary, a Call to Use Video Games to Encourage Empathy” on Games and Learning. Jessica and Jeremy detail […]

3C Expanding Technologies to Mobile Apps for Medical Montoring

3C Institute is currently developing the Online Medical Monitoring System (OMMS), an integrated web and mobile system to facilitate and monitor treatment adherence for individuals with a chronic illness. Our first application of the OMMS is Planet K, a mobile phone app designed to help youth (ages 12-21) transition to self-care of chronic kidney disease. […]

3C Institute CEO Participates in Workgroup to Strengthen IES Programs

On Thursday, October 16, 2014, 3C Institute CEO Melissa DeRosier attended the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences’s (IES) Technical Working Group Meeting to strategize about ways to strengthen IES’s research and grant training programs The goal of the meeting was to ensure that programs offered through the National Center for Education Research […]

3C Institute CEO Presenting at White House Education Game Workshop

White House Event Dr. Melissa DeRosier was invited to participate in an Education Game Workshop, hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the U.S. Department of Education, on Thursday, September 4th. The event will bring together Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grantees, education game developers, and agency experts to discuss […]

News

DEB CHILDRESS, PHD

Chief of Research and Learning Content

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Childress obtained her PhD in psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to coming to 3C Institute, she served as a research associate and a postdoctoral fellow in the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill working on a longitudinal imaging study aimed at identifying the early markers of autism through behavioral and imaging methodologies. She has 19 years of autism research experience, during which she has examined the behavioral, personality, and cognitive characteristics of individuals with autism and their family members. Dr. Childress also has experience developing behavioral and parent report measurement tools, coordinating multi-site research studies, and collecting data from children and families. She has taught courses and seminars in general child development, autism, and cognitive development at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Expertise

  • autism
  • early development
  • behavioral measurement
  • integrating behavioral and biological measurement

Education

  • Postdoctoral fellowship, Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities (Institutional NRSA-NICHD), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • PhD, developmental psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • BS, psychology (minor in sociology), University of Iowa

Selected Publications

  • Elison, J. T., Wolff, J. J., Heimer, D. C., Paterson, S. J., Gu, H., Hazlett, H. C., Styner, M, Gerig, G., & Piven, J. (in press). Frontolimbic neural circuitry at 6 months predicts individual differences in joint attention at 9 months. Developmental Science.
  • Wassink, T. H., Vieland, V. J., Sheffield, V. C., Bartlett, C. W., Goedken, R., Childress, D. & Piven, J. (2008). Posterior probability of linkage analysis of autism dataset identifies linkage to chromosome 16. Psychiatric Genetics,18(2),85-91.
  • Losh, M., Childress, D., Lam K. & Piven, J. (2008). Defining key features of the broad autism phenotype: A comparison across parents of multiple- and single-incidence autism families. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 147B(4):424-33.
  • Wassink, T. H., Piven, J., Vieland, V. J., Jenkins, L., Frantz R., Bartlett, C. W., Goedken, R., … Sheffield, V.C. (2005). Evaluation of the chromosome 2q37.3 gene CENTG2 as an autism susceptibility gene. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 136, 36-44.
  • Barrett, S., Beck, J., Bernier, R., Bisson, E., Braun, T., Casavant, T., Childress, D., … Vieland, V. (1999). An autosomal genomic screen for autism. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 88, 609-615. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1096-8628(19991215)88:63.0.CO;2-L
  • Piven, J., Palmer, P., Landa, R., Santangelo, S., Jacobi, D. & Childress, D. (1997). Personality and language characteristics in parents from multiple-incidence autism families. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 74, 398-411.
  • Piven, J., Palmer, P., Jacobi, D., Childress, D. & Arndt, S. (1997). Broader autism phenotype: Evidence from a family history study of multiple-incidence autism families. American Journal of Psychiatry, 154, 185-190.