Sarah E. Nelson PhD

Dr. Sarah E. Nelson is the Director for Research at the Division on Addiction, Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital; as well as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She received her PhD in social psychology from the University of Oregon in 2003, where she studied both social cognition and developmental psychopathology. At the Division, Dr. Nelson has developed two major lines of research. She (1) studies the etiology of addiction, investigating the individual trajectories of people who develop problems with addiction and developing predictive models of that development, and (2) investigates the relationship between DUI offense, psychiatric comorbidity, and other psychosocial factors. The common thread throughout these studies has been the investigation of problem behaviors (e.g., why people act in self- and other- destructive ways): the causes, consequences, and prevention of those behaviors.

Dr. Nelson has given invited presentations at local, national and international conferences and seminars. Dr. Nelson interweaves all of her presentations with examples and exercises that provide a basic survey of how science progresses and encourage people to think critically about research and practice. More formally, she has developed and co-directed a research methods seminar for health professionals at Cambridge Health Alliance and is the course director for an online Harvard CME course Research Methods 101 for the Provider: A Guide to Critical Research Consumption.