Dr. Copeland is a clinical psychologist and epidemiologist, who trained at the University of Vermont and completed his clinical internship at Duke University Medical Center. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Center for Developmental Epidemiology in the department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center.

       Dr. Copeland’s research program focuses on the presentation, course, and biological and environmental causes of psychiatric disorders in childhood and adolescence. His research goal is to study the pleiomorphic psychopathologic expression of putative risk factors (including promising genetic markers) under varying conditions of adversity across childhood and adolescence.

        Dr. Copeland’s research program is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD). In 2008, he was awarded a NARSAD Young Investigator grant and a K23 career development award through NIMH. With his collaborators Adrian Angold, Jane Costello, and Pat Sullivan, he is currently conducting a number of federally-funded studies of gene-environment interplay in the development of mood and substance disorders.