More About Carl
Carl’s research is translational in nature and involves using laboratory methods to understand real world clinical phenomena and to develop novel assessment and treatment strategies and spans the clinical domains of addictions, personality pathology, and mood disorders. He is most interested in the common processes across these conditions and additionally is dedicated to bringing this science into the real world where it will have an impact.
So, while he has been doing impressive work in the field of Cognitive-Behavioral Psychology at noteworthy academic institutions like Brown, University of Maryland, Yale, Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), Emory, West Virginia University and Duke University, he was not content to just do research and stay in the lab and the classroom. He wanted to reach beyond the scope of the journals and the institutions and touch the real world. He wanted his research to find a place in community settings where it could have an impact. He began this effort on his own and with the collaborative efforts of trusted academic colleagues and graduate students, but wanted to do more. A couple of years ago he teamed up with a long time friend Molly McDonald, who had just left the business world and was making her way back into the world of science and academia, to bridge the two more effectively. Carl saw an opportunity to leverage and utilize their combined skill sets and asked her to join him at the Center for Addictions, Personality and Emotion Research (CAPER) lab at the University of Maryland and together they worked to secure private funding and support for his evidence-based research and science in an effort to employ practical application in the community.
Carl was a co creator of the therapeutic modality Brief Behavioral Activation for Depression (BATD). Carl was giving BATD presentations to academic and business institutions around the world, but never had any educational training materials to leave his students with, and participants also began to request materials. Carl and McDonald determined that a high quality educational training video and DVD would aid in this joint effort to convert his translational research into a practical application platform. Carl and McDonald partnered with award-winning documentarian and filmmaker Laura Seltzer to create the first Brief BATD video. Behavior Works was born.