Pitt Psychiatry Investigator Amy Byrd, PhD, Receives YMC Shrink Tank Brilliance Award

Congratulations to Amy Byrd, PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology), who has received the 2025 YMC Shrink Tank Brilliance Award. 

Dr. Byrd is a clinical and developmental psychologist whose research examines dynamic biopsychosocial processes underlying the development and persistence of aggression and related psychopathology in children and families, with the goal of informing and refining targeted intervention strategies. Her award-winning project focuses on the development and validation of a mobile sensing intervention delivery tool, Parenting Interventions DeliVered with Optimal Timing (PIVOT), that will help parents of children at high risk for aggression to identify when to implement empirically supported behavioral strategies in real time.

Aggression in children occurs most often within the context of parent-child conflict. Current interventions, which aim to decrease parent-child conflict and increase positive parent-child interactions, have only small to moderate effects. Consequently, many children and families do not improve and are at risk for exacerbation of mental illness. The low efficacy of existing interventions may be due, in part, to the mode of delivery, which requires parents to decide, during a highly charged interaction, when to implement new and complex behavioral strategies. The PIVOT app will rely on proximity- and voice-based detection coupled with changes in child physiological arousal to prompt parents to use specific intervention strategies.

Dr. Byrd was selected from a large applicant pool to participate in a Shark Tank-style competitive event, where she presented her innovative work for a chance to win the $100,000 research award. The competition is aimed at addressing critical needs in child and adolescent mental health research, and supporting early-career investigators working in this field.

Traci Kennedy, PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry), and Mary Woody, PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry), were also recognized for the following projects:

Dr. Kennedy: TIPS for Teens - A smartphone-based intervention for young adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) help strengthen self-control in adolescents ages 12-17 (including 50% female youth, who are understudied in ADHD research). TIPS for Teens will provide real-time bursts of personalized support throughout the day and prevent long-term mental health concerns well before transitioning to adulthood.

Dr. Woody: Scroll, Watch, Repeat: Understanding the Impact of Violent Social Media Exposure on Teen Anxiety and Externalizing Behaviors – This project will follow 150 teens over 18 months to understand how exposure to violent viral media may affect attention, media use patterns, and challenges with emotion dysregulation across anxiety, ADHD, and oppositional defiant disorder symptoms.