Karen Appleyard Carmody, Ph.D. (ICD, 2005), LCSW, has received the 2012 Early Career Research Award for Outstanding Contributions to Research/Practice in the Field of Child Maltreatment. The award is given annually by Division 37 of the American Psychological Association to recognize researchers/practitioners who have made substantial contributions to the field within eight years of receiving a terminal degree and who have demonstrated the potential to continue such contributions.

Carmody is a licensed psychologist and clinical associate at the Center for Child and Family Health (CCFH) in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center, where she is working with Dr. Mary Dozier and a team at CCFH to develop the nation's first Learning Collaborative focused on the dissemination of Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC); she serves as the evaluator for the PCIT of the Carolinas project, the nation's first Learning Collaborative for Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) and where she also serves as a clinical supervisor for the Healthy Families Durham home visiting and child maltreatment prevention program and program manager for the Durham Early Head Start Home-Based Program. Carmody is the former co-director of the North Carolina Child Response Initiative, a police-mental health partnership designed to provide crisis intervention and support to children and families who have witnessed domestic and community violence.

Carmody's research focuses on the correlates and consequences of attachment and parenting, developmental processes underlying resilience following early adversity, and empirically-based interventions relating to trauma and attachment. Her research is grounded in a developmental psychopathology perspective and in her clinical interests in the outcomes of early adversity, with the goal of advancing interventions with high-risk children.