Frances Champagne facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Frances A. Champagne
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| Alma mater | Queen's University (BA) McGill University (MSc) (PhD) |
| Occupation | Professor, Psychology, University of Texas at Austin |
| Awards | NIH Director's New Innovator Award |
Frances A. Champagne is a Canadian psychologist and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She is well-known for her studies on how our experiences can change our brains and behavior. Her research often looks at how mothers influence their babies and how our genes can be affected by our environment.
Professor Champagne explores something called developmental plasticity. This means how living things can change and adapt as they grow, based on what happens around them. She has shown how small differences in how a mother cares for her baby can actually change how the baby's genes work. This can then affect how the baby develops and behaves.
She has received important awards for her work, including the NIH Director's New Innovator Award in 2007 and the Frank A. Beach Young Investigator Award in 2009. People have even called her "the bee's knees of neuroscience," which means she's considered excellent in her field! She also helps on a committee that works to improve the mental and emotional health of children and young people in the United States.
Education and Learning
Frances Champagne earned her first degree in psychology from Queen's University, Canada. She then went on to McGill University in Canada, where she earned both her Master's and PhD degrees in Neuroscience. During her studies, she worked with a mentor named Michael Meaney.
After her PhD, Dr. Champagne did special research called postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge in England. There, she focused on studying animal behavior.
In 2006, she became a professor at Columbia University in New York City. She was later promoted to Associate Professor. In 2017, she moved to the University of Texas at Austin, where she is now a full professor in the Department of Psychology. She still has a connection with Columbia University as an adjunct professor. As a professor, she teaches exciting courses about how the brain develops, how our environment affects our genes and behavior, and the ethics of genetics.
What She Studies
Dr. Champagne's research looks at how the parental brain works. This includes understanding the brain changes that lead to different ways parents care for their children. She also studies how the environment affects these brain circuits.
One of her main interests is epigenetics. This is about how our genes can be turned "on" or "off" without changing the actual DNA code. Think of it like a dimmer switch for a light. She studies how a mother's care can lead to these epigenetic changes in her baby.
She also researches how things that happen before birth can affect a baby's development. This includes looking at how stress, harmful chemicals, or different foods during pregnancy can change how genes work in the placenta and the baby's brain.
Another area she explores is how fathers influence mothers and their children. She looks at the epigenetic ways these interactions happen. Dr. Champagne is also interested in finding ways to help children overcome difficult experiences they might have had early in life. She investigates the epigenetic changes that help children be strong and bounce back from challenges.
In her lab, the Epigenetics, Development & Neuroscience Lab, she and her team study how our bodies and brains change throughout life because of our environment. A big part of their work focuses on how chemicals called bisphenols (like BPA) affect mothers and babies. These chemicals can disrupt hormones in the body. Her work in this area is supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
She is also part of a long-term study called the Boricua Youth Study. This project started at Columbia University and aims to understand what helps or harms Puerto Rican youth as they grow up. This study is funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Most recently, in 2018, she helped organize the Parental Brain Conference. This meeting brought together experts to discuss the biological and behavioral aspects of parental health.
Awards
- 2012-2013 Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award in Psychology from Columbia University.
- 2009 Frank A. Beach Young Investigator Award in Behavioral Neuroendocrinology.
- 2007 NIH Director's New Innovator Award. Her project was about how epigenetic changes can pass down reproductive behaviors.
