For George Slavich, Ph.D., stress is more than a momentary reaction — it’s a state that can trigger a cascading effect across our biological, mental and physical health.
Slavich’s interest in stress and its far-reaching impact led him to create the first online system for assessing stress exposure across the entire life course. As founding Director of the Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research at the University of California, Los Angeles, Slavich’s research investigates how social experiences can affect biological systems and even our genome. Called the Social Safety Theory, his work examines how sustained threats to physical and social safety affect not just our thinking but our immune system, influencing aging, well-being, and overall health.
Of particular interest to Slavich is the effect of stress on children, a population that often has little control over their environment, and how this can induce reactions from depression to secondary stress-induced responses that may permanently affect the way our body functions. He explains that responses to stressors, such as abuse to neglect, can be carried into “adulthood regardless of whether it’s adaptive to the situation or not.” His research has also shown how stress and trauma can be carried across generations.
This research folds into Slavich’s work with the UCLA-UCSF ACEs Aware Family Resilience Network (UCAAN), where he serves as its Director of Evaluation and Evidence Department. Funded through a historic $175 million grant from State of California, UCANN is studying how evidence-based methods could potentially mitigate these stressors faced by young people.
Slavich has authored hundreds of papers in leading journals including JAMA Psychiatry and Nature Medicine. He’s a Beck Institute Scholar, a Branco Weiss Fellow, and has collected numerous mentoring, teaching, and research awards across his career. He is an investigator at the Staglin One Mind Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, the Director of the California Stress, Trauma & Resilience Network, and a research scientist with the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. More recently, his work was profiled in Nature.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Slavich to the DOC 2025 Faculty!