Milenna van Dijk is an Assistant Professor at Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute. She is a translational neuroscientist whose work focuses on understanding the genetic, environmental and neurobiological mechanisms determining vulnerability versus resilience to depression development in youth at high risk. Dr. van Dijk obtained a Ph.D. in Cell Biology (Neuroscience track) from New York University, studying how the hippocampus distinguishes between similar aversive memories in rodents. Wanting to translate her findings to humans and risk for depression and anxiety, she completed her postdoctoral training in Translational Epidemiology at Columbia University/NYSPI. Her lab combines rodent neuroscience, human neuroimaging, psychiatric epidemiology, and functional genomics to translate molecular and circuit-level findings from experimental models to human populations. Her research is funded by NIMH R00 and R01 awards, and a Brain Behavior Research Foundation Young Investigator Grant and she received several early career awards including a James Kirk Bernard Foundation Award for Excellence in the Biological Exploration of Suicide. Her ultimate goal is to identify youth most likely to develop psychopathology following familial risk or early adversity to steer prevention efforts to those who may need it most.