Darlene Kertes
Associate Professor with Tenure of Developmental Psychology and Behavioral & Cognitive Neuroscience
Former Director of Developmental Psychology
Contact Information
Email: dkertes@ufl.edu
Phone: (352) 273-2137
FAX: (352) 392-7985
Office: 084 Psychology Building
Mailing address:
Department of Psychology
945 Center Dr
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-2250
Degree:
PhD, University of Minnesota
Brief Biography
Darlene Kertes, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology in the Developmental program and the Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Program and is affiliated with the University of Florida Genetics Institute. Dr. Kertes has been a University of Florida Term Professor and Director of the Developmental Psychology graduate program. Dr. Kertes’s research program focuses on the antecedents and consequences of stress in health and development. Her lab examines the role of life experiences and epigenetic processes on activity of a stress-sensitive neuroendocrine system, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical system. Dr. Kertes further studies the links between stressful life experiences, including severe adversity, life events, and exposure to violence, along with the protective factors in such as family support and neighborhood social cohesion on emotional and behavioral health outcomes from the pre-natal period through late adolescence. Specific attention is also paid to genetic, epigenetic, and neurobiological processes that underlie the links between life experiences and health outcomes. Dr. Kertes completed a Ph.D. in child psychology from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota and an NRSA Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University.
Dr. Kertes has received several nationally competitive awards to pursue her work, including awards from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health (NICHD and NIMHD), the National Center for Advancing Clinical and Translational Sciences, Fulbright Foundation, Woodruff Fund, and the Heerman Foundation. Dr. Kertes currently serves as Chair of the Interdisciplinary Studies Committee for the Society for Research on Adolescence and is on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Adolescence. She has also served at the National Institutes of Health as a Science and Technology Policy Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), where she was involved in launching the Genes, Environment and Health Initiative.