Dr. Sanne van Rooij Joins Research and Outcomes Team as Research Scientist

January 6, 2026

ATLANTA – Skyland Trail is pleased to welcome Sanne van Rooij, PhD, MSc, to the Outcomes & Research Department in 2025 as a part-time research scientist. Dr. van Rooij also is an associate professor with the Emory University School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

“By welcoming Dr. van Rooij to our team, we are excited to strengthen our partnership with Emory University and to expand our capacity to develop data-driven insights to improve our ability to personalize patient care,” says Alex Rothbaum, PhD, MPH, director of Outcomes and Research for Skyland Trail.

As part of the Skyland Trail Outcomes and Research team, Dr. van Rooij will contribute to research that:

  • Analyzes the long-term outcomes of patients who completed treatment
  • Helps inform individual patient care in real-time by measuring changes in symptoms and functioning
  • Ensures fidelity to gold-standard, evidence-based treatment modalities
  • Improves treatment program delivery year over year
  • Trains the next generation of researchers
  • Uses Skyland Trail’s unique setting and data to advance understanding of mental health disorders and treatment

Dr. van Rooij also is the director of the Stress & Neuromodulation Lab, an investigator and associate director of Scientific Outreach at the Grady Trauma Project. Dr. van Rooij received her PhD in Clinical Neuroscience in 2015 from Utrecht University, the Netherlands and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University. She earned master’s degrees in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience and in Developmental Psychology from Maastricht University. Dr. van Rooij has published over 90 peer-reviewed articles in broad areas of translational cognitive and clinical science, including anxiety, depression, and PTSD as well as state-of-the-art neuroimaging research. She received federal funding and a prestigious young investigator award from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation to study the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for the treatment of PTSD.