Jamilah Silver, PhD, is an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is also a faculty fellow at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG).

Silver’s work focuses on how irritability and related mental health concerns develop across childhood and adolescence. Her research has received federal support from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and National Science Foundation (NSF), and she has earned national and institutional honors for research excellence and innovation, including awards from the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology, the Academy of Psychological Clinical Science, and University College London.

As part of our FPG Faculty Fellow profile series, we recently spoke with Silver to learn about her professional journey, what keeps her motivated, and what being a faculty fellow at FPG means to her. Here’s what she had to say.

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Tell us about your professional journey—what led you to the work you do? Was there a key "aha moment" that inspired you?

My professional journey really began when I was 20 years old and my two young nephews came to live with my family. They were just 10 weeks and 20 months old when they left a difficult home environment in Texas and moved to Maryland. During those first months, they struggled to adjust. They were often irritable, had frequent tantrums, and were hesitant to explore the world around them. As our home provided stability, warmth, and consistency, I watched an incredible transformation unfold. Over time, they became confident, joyful, and curious children.

Seeing that change firsthand completely shifted the way I thought about child development. It made me realize both how profoundly early adversity can affect children and how remarkably resilient they are when they receive the right support. That experience sparked my desire to understand why some children develop emotional and behavioral difficulties following adversity while others recover and thrive, and how we can intervene earlier to change developmental trajectories.

As I pursued those questions through my clinical training and research, I became increasingly interested in identifying the earliest signs that a child may be struggling. Again and again, I found myself returning to irritability. Whether in pediatric clinics, schools, or specialty mental health settings, irritability was one of the most common reasons families sought help, yet it was also one of the least well-understood symptoms in child mental health. During graduate school, this observation became the focus of my research. It ultimately led me to develop the Tonic and Phasic Irritability Scale (TAPIS), which distinguishes between persistent irritable mood and episodic anger outbursts. Today, my research seeks to understand the developmental pathways that lead to different forms of irritability and translate that knowledge into interventions that help children and families before problems become more severe.

Throughout my clinical training, I sought opportunities to work with children and families across pediatric primary care, foster care, inpatient psychiatry, and outpatient settings. Those experiences continually reinforced what my nephews taught me years ago: Children are incredibly resilient, behavior is communication, and early, supportive intervention can change lives.

What are you working on right now?

My research program is focused on understanding why some children develop persistent emotional and behavioral difficulties while others remain resilient, with the goal of identifying opportunities for earlier and more personalized intervention.

One project, Responsive Parenting in the Moment, is developing a just-in-time parenting intervention that provides parents with personalized, evidence-based support during the everyday moments when young children's irritability is most likely to escalate. Rather than relying solely on traditional weekly therapy sessions, we're exploring how technology can deliver support exactly when families need it most.

Another project, Project Unplugged, examines one of the most common challenges many families experience today: transitions away from tablets and other digital devices. We're combining observations of children's behavior during device transitions with measures of brain activity, physiology, and families' day-to-day experiences to understand why some preschoolers become highly distressed when screen time ends while others transition with little difficulty. Our goal is to identify the brain, behavioral, and parenting processes that can make these everyday moments easier for children and families.

I'm also leading Project BrainStorm, which uses electroencephalography (EEG) and computerized cognitive tasks to understand how the developing brain supports self-regulation and frustration tolerance. By identifying the brain processes associated with different patterns of irritability, we hope to better understand why some children experience persistent irritable mood while others struggle with explosive anger outbursts and ultimately develop more personalized approaches to prevention and intervention.

Across all of these projects, my goal is the same: to move beyond identifying that a child is struggling and instead understand why they are struggling so we can intervene earlier and more effectively.

What keeps you motivated in your work?

One of the things I value most is that I continue to work directly with children and families as a licensed psychologist. Every week I meet families who are navigating challenges like severe irritability, disruptive behavior, and parenting difficulties. They are doing their best, actively seeking help, and often struggling to find interventions that truly fit their child's needs.

Those experiences continually shape the questions I ask as a researcher. I don't want my work to exist only in journals. I want it to solve problems that families are facing every day. Seeing how scientific discoveries can directly improve assessment, intervention, and ultimately children's lives is what motivates me to keep asking difficult questions.

What do you find most challenging about your work?

The biggest challenge is that there are so many important questions to answer and never enough time to pursue all of them. Child development is incredibly complex, and every study seems to generate several new questions. While that can be overwhelming at times, it's also what makes this work so exciting. Every answer brings us one step closer to improving how we understand and support children and families.

What do you most enjoy about your work?

I love that every day is different. One day I might be working with families in clinic, the next mentoring students in the lab, analyzing data, writing grants, or collaborating with colleagues across psychology, pediatrics, neuroscience, education, and implementation science. I especially enjoy mentoring students and trainees and watching them develop into independent scientists. It's incredibly rewarding to help the next generation of researchers pursue questions that will improve children's lives.

What does being an FPG Faculty Fellow mean to you? What inspired you to become a Fellow?

FPG brings together researchers from many different disciplines who share a common goal of improving the lives of children and families. Because my work spans developmental psychology, clinical psychology, pediatrics, implementation science, and prevention, being part of such an interdisciplinary community feels like a natural fit.

I'm especially excited about opportunities to collaborate with colleagues whose expertise complements my own. Some of the most important questions in child development cannot be answered from a single disciplinary perspective, and I see FPG as a place where those kinds of collaborations can flourish.