Dr. Kernan Biography
Claudia Kernan Ph.D. , Post Doctoral Fellow UCLA
Dr. Claudia L. Kernan is a clinician and researcher with several years of experience working with children in therapeutic, educational, and research settings. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UCLA, where she minored in developmental psychology. She completed her predoctoral internship in pediatric neuropsychology at North Shore University Hospital/NYU, where she received extensive training in the neuropsychological assessment of children with a wide range of medical and developmental disorders, including traumatic brain injury, epilepsy, cancer, prenatal-substance exposure, learning disabilities, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, developmental language disorders, and autism spectrum disorders.
Dr. Kernan currently holds a position as a Research Fellow at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. As a fellow at UCLA, she provides neuropsychological assessments to children and adolescents at the Medical Psychology Assessment Center (MPAC). In addition , she is working on a research project investigating the recovery of children with traumatic brain injury, focusing on how social factors influence the recovery process. Through her work on this project, she has gained extensive experience working with brain-injured children and their families, conducting neuropsychological evaluations and linking families to resources and supports within their communities. Her most recent work in the area of traumatic brain injury includes consultation on a project investigating the effects of mild head injuries on NFL players.
Additional areas of research interest, which have resulted in numerous professional presentations and publications, include hormones and cognition, childhood schizophrenia, and issues of ethnic identity and multiculturalism in school settings. Further clinical experiences include individual psychotherapy with children and adults, group social skills training for children, and the neuropsychological assessment of adults with learning disabilities, epilepsy, age-related memory loss and dementia, Parkinson's disease, stroke, and other neurological conditions. Over the course of her postdoctoral, graduate, and undergraduate career, Dr. Kernan was awarded several fellowships and honors for her work. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, with a B.A. in anthropology from Princeton University and has been awarded the UCLA Mental Retardation Research Center Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Ford Foundation Pre-doctoral Fellowship, the UCLA Eugene Cota Robles Fellowship, the American Psychological Association Pre-doctoral Fellowship, the UCLA Women's Faculty Club Scholarship, the Princeton Community House Certificate for Outstanding Community Service, the National Science Foundation Incentives for Excellence Scholarship Prize, the Princeton University Thesis Prize, and the Mellon Fellowship.