***** Dr. Giangrande will be accepting students for the Fall 2027 admissions cycle in the Clinical-Community Psychology Ph.D. concentration. *****

 

Background

Evan J. Giangrande, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of South Carolina, where he is affiliated with the Clinical-Community Psychology program. He also holds an appointment in the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Dr. Giangrande earned a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with a concentration in Quantitative Psychology at the University of Virginia. During graduate school, he was a fellow in the International Max Planck Research School on the Life Course. He completed his predoctoral clinical internship at McLean Hospital / Harvard Medical School, followed by postdoctoral training as a Pamela Sklar Psychiatric Genetics and Neuroscience Fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School.

Research

Dr. Giangrande applies a developmental and lifespan perspective to psychiatric and behavioral genetics, using longitudinal designs to unpack variation in the trajectories of severe mental illness, cognitive functioning, and other complex behavioral traits.

In two complementary lines of research, he investigates how genetic liability and environmental exposures interact to influence behavioral change. To advance this work, which is inherently transdisciplinary, Dr. Giangrande develops and applies advanced quantitative methods and contributes to international consortium-based data generation efforts.

Genetic Influences on Psychotic Disorder Course and Outcomes

People with psychotic disorders experience heterogeneous courses of illness, varying in age of onset, severity, chronicity, and treatment response. Dr. Giangrande leverages genomics and large-scale, longitudinal clinical data (e.g., electronic health records) to examine how genetic differences are associated with variability in the etiology, developmental course, and outcomes of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other psychotic illnesses. He is particularly interested in integrating deep, clinically relevant phenotypes into molecular genetic designs. For example, Dr. Giangrande’s research has shown that genetic liability predicts differences in the frequency and temporal patterning of psychiatric hospitalizations among adults with severe mental illness. He also participates in international efforts to identify genetic influences on cognitive impairment in schizophrenia (Cognition subgroup of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium Schizophrenia Working Group) and to increase ancestral representation in psychotic disorder genetics research (Populations Underrepresented in Mental Illness Association Studies Consortium).

Longitudinal Dynamics of Gene-Environment Interplay Across the Lifespan

Using intensively assessed longitudinal twin studies, Dr. Giangrande explores how typically developing individuals change and differentiate from each other over time as a function of their genetic makeup and environmental context. Much of his work in this area has focused on cognitive development and aging. Applying novel statistical methods (e.g., continuous time structural equation modeling), Dr. Giangrande has demonstrated the cognitively beneficial impact of environmental enrichment and, by contrast, the suppressive influence of socioeconomic disadvantage.

Public Science

Alongside his empirical research, Dr. Giangrande studies bioethical challenges facing psychiatric and behavioral genetics including the (mis)understanding and (mis)use of genetics research in scientific, clinical, and public contexts. He is the founding chair of the Behavior Genetics Association Public Science Committee.

Representative Publications

 

Psychiatric Genetics & Psychotic Disorders

Giangrande, E.J., Kämpe, A., Suvisaari, J. Lähteenvuo, M., Vartiainen, E.,

SUPER-Finland Researchers, Pietiläinen, O., Palotie, A., Smoller, J.W., & Neale, B.M. Polygenic scores for schizophrenia and educational attainment predict global functioning across inpatient psychiatric hospitalization among adults with schizophrenia. Under review.

Preprint: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.05.20.25328039

Giangrande, E.J., Weber, R., & Turkheimer, E. (2022). What do we know about the genetic architecture of psychopathology? Annual Review of Clinical Psychology,

18(1), 19-42. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-081219-091234

Schaefer, J., Giangrande, E., Weinberger, D.R., & Dickinson, D. (2013). The global cognitive impairment in schizophrenia: Consistent over decades and around the world. Schizophrenia Research, 150(1), 42-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2013.07.009

Gene-Environment Interplay

Giangrande, E.J., Beam, C.R., Finkel, D., Davis, D.W., & Turkheimer, E. (2022).

Genetically informed, multilevel analysis of the Flynn Effect across four decades and three WISC versions. Child Development, 93(1), e47-e58. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13675

Giangrande, E.J., Driver, C.C., Beam, C.R., Womack, S.R., Finkel, D., Davis, D.W., & Turkheimer, E. Developmental increases in the reliability of cognitive assessment bias Heritability x Age estimates. Revised manuscript under review.

Preprint: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/udbjr_v2

Public Science & Bioethics

Giangrande, E.J. (2026). The Preprint Problem: Fringe, genetically informed studies of group differences in behavior housed on open science platforms. Behavior Genetics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-026-10260-6 van de Weijer, M.P., Bassett, E., Appelbaum, P.S., Giangrande, E.J.*, & Matthews, L.J.*

(2026). Imputing parental genotypes through Mendelian Imputation: Ethical and legal considerations. Behavior Genetics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-025-10250-0

*Equal contributions