John Gilmore, MD, a faculty fellow at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG), is the Thad and Alice Eure Distinguished Professor and vice chair for Research and Scientific Affairs in the Department of Psychiatry at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine. Dr. Gilmore started the Schizophrenia Treatment and Evaluation Program (STEP) at UNC in 1992, and he is a founder and the director of the UNC Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health and is active in the care of patients with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.  

Dr. Gilmore’s areas of interest include early childhood brain development, schizophrenia, and severe mental illness. His research focuses on early childhood brain development and how it contributes to risk for schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. 

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

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

I was always interested in how the brain worked. I did research as an undergrad in a neurosurgery lab, studying seizures. In medical school I continued doing basic neuroscience research and clinically gravitated to psychiatry. During my psychiatry residency, I really enjoyed working with people who had schizophrenia. 

I actually did have an aha moment when I read one of the first papers that proposed a neurodevelopmental theory of schizophrenia.  At that moment I thought, “This is what I want to do.”

What are you working on right now? 

I study early childhood brain development and risk for schizophrenia and other psychiatric illness. We enrolled more than 1,000 newborns in the UNC Early Brain Development Study (EBDS) and have been following them every two years with brain imaging and cognitive and behavior assessments. The children in the EBDS cohort are now between the ages of 12 and 18, so we’re able to see if early brain developmental trajectories can be used to identify children at risk for psychiatric illness well before the onset of symptoms. In this way we may be able to ultimately intervene early and improve outcomes. 

What keeps you motivated in your work?

There is always something new to think about and study. The human brain is so complex and there so many things that influence how a child’s brain develops.  

What do you find most challenging about your work?

I think that is the biggest challenge—the complexity. I’ve started to believe that every person’s brain is unique, the result of a unique set of genes, environmental factors, and randomness or chance. That makes finding consistent brain-behavior relationships across populations very difficult. 

What do you enjoy most about your work?

Being a part of a team, working with and learning from colleagues, collaborators, and trainees.  The energy is inspiring.

What does being an FPG faculty fellow mean to you? How has it affected your work?

When I first started the EBDS study, I knew nothing about assessment childhood cognition and behavior.  I met Steve Resnick, PhD, at an FPG seminar, I think he was the head of the FPG Assessment Core way back then. We started talking and one thing led to another.  He and FPG became a critical part of the success of the EBDS study.