The Scientific Committee serves as the executive committee of the scientific area of ISSTD – advising the Board and other committees on all matters of science, research, and further development of theory and clinical practice guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of complex trauma and dissociative disorders.  We are involved in all strategic endeavors and help uphold the reputation of the society.

The Chair, Lauren Lebois, PhD, and Chair Elect, Milissa Kaufman, MD, PhD were newly appointed in July 2021 and embarked on a listening tour of committee members and other stakeholders in the society.  The goal was to better acquaint ourselves with each member, and to gather insights, ideas and context to help guide the identification of future priorities for the Scientific Committee in 2022.  

Based on feedback gathered during the listening tour, our major goal in 2022 is to build structures and systems within ISSTD to make it more of a ‘home’ for researchers and to enhance communication with the broader membership of ISSTD.  To this end, we nominated researchers to present  one of the 2023 Annual Conference Plenaries, and we plan to host a research-related panel discussion at this conference as well.  In addition, this year we plan to start a Research Special Interest Group (SIG) open to all ISSTD members. The goal of the Research SIG will be to cultivate a space for research discussion, sharing of findings, sponsorship/mentorship, and networking.  

We also made explicit a number of informal practices within the Scientific Committee membership. Some of these practices will include the following: acting as a forum for sponsorship/mentorship, hosting each other for talks, asking each other to be manuscript reviewers, citing each other’s work, and helping to disseminate each other’s work on social media.

Other tasks tackled by the committee this past year include:

• Making the committee whole with new members
• Reviewing abstract submissions for the annual and virtual conference 
• Overseeing the review of research-related advertising recruitment requests

Our current membership includes the following individuals:

Chair: Lauren Lebois, PhD  https://www.ddtrp.com/laml
Chair Elect: Milissa Kaufman, MD, PhD  https://www.ddtrp.com/pagemk
Past Chair: Vedat Şar, MD  https://www.vedatsar.com/en/

Ruth Blizard, PhD   https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ruth-Blizard
Bethany Brand, PhD  https://bethanybrand.com/
Jonathan Cleveland, PhD  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jonathan-Cleveland-2
Paul Dell, PhD   https://understandingdissociation.com/about/
Martin Dorahy, PhD  https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/science/contact-us/people/martin-dorahy.html
Negar Fani, PhD  https://www.negarfani.com/
Jennifer Gómez, PhD  https://jmgomez.org/
Heather Hall, MD   https://www.heatherhallmd.org/
Sherain Harricharan, PhD   https://hriresearch.com/about-us/our-people/trainees/sherain-harricharan/
Mary-Anne Kate, PhD   https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mary-Anne-Kate
Marilyn Korzekwa, MD   https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marilyn-Korzekwa
Christa Kruger, MD   https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christa-Krueger
Andreas Laddis, MD  https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreas-laddis-37377183/
Alfonso Martinez-Taboas, PhD   https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=M-W5cE4AAAAJ&hl=en
Warwick Middleton, MD   https://warwickmiddleton.com/about-professor-middleton/
Shae Nester, MA   https://www.linkedin.com/in/m-shae-nester-80a46a181/
Cori Palermo, MA   https://www.ddtrp.com/pagecp
Matthew Robinson, PhD   http://matthewarobinsonphd.com/about-dr-robinson
Dana Ross, MD   https://psychiatry.utoronto.ca/faculty/dana-ross
Adah Sachs, PhD   https://www.adahsachs.com/
Michael Salter, PhD  https://www.organisedabuse.com/