The Weill Cornell Medicine Department of Psychiatry is delighted to announce that Avital Falk, Ph.D., has been appointed the Director of a new Division of Digital and Treatment Innovations and the Director of Child and Adolescent Psychology. As director, Dr. Falk will be responsible for building and overseeing a centralized hub for faculty and trainees to gain mentorship and support in the development, dissemination and study of novel digital tools and psychotherapeutic treatments. She will work collaboratively with Rebecca Rendleman, M.D., Vice Chair for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Anthony Ahmed, Ph.D., Vice Chair for Psychology, to mentor and support the career development of our rapidly expanding child psychology faculty and clinicians working with youth. She will also contribute to the advancement of specialty programing, research and training in child and adolescent psychology.
Dr. Falk is uniquely positioned to further our goals of providing excellent treatment and service delivery to current clinical and digital psychological programs to further Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian’s excellence in psychiatry. She has been instrumental in developing cutting-edge psychological and digital treatment innovations that help improve access to reliable mental health resources and care for patients. In her work in psychological innovations, Dr. Falk expanded the Weill Cornell Medicine Pediatric OCD, Anxiety, and Tic disorders (POCAT) Program and developed innovative intensive treatment programs to target pediatric OCD and anxiety disorders. As a leader in digital innovations, she designed Maya, Weill Cornell Medicine’s digital app which provides a flexible and modular platform to disseminate cognitive behavioral therapy. She continues to be dedicated to improving mental health care access by growing psychological and digital innovations, expanding related training and researching program efficacy and dissemination.
Dr. Avital Falk is an associate professor of psychology in clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine. She received her undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania and her doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She completed her psychology internship at the NYU Child Study Center/Bellevue Hospital and her post-doctoral fellowship at the Youth Anxiety Center (now the Center for Youth Mental Health) at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine.