Dr Monica Aas joined the Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King’s College London as an MRC CDA Fellow in 2022.

Early life stress is a well-known risk factor for developing severe mental disorders, but the mechanisms linking stress exposure to mental disorders are not clear, which is what Monica’s team is investigating. We are also interested in why some people develop mental disorders following early life stress while others do not.

To fill these gaps of knowledge, Monica works with a range of datasets, including the Genes and psychosis (GAP) dataset comprised of people with a first-episode psychosis followed up for 5 years, and the EU-GEI study (EUropean Network of national schizophrenia networks studying Gene-Environment Interactions); a multisite incidence and case-control study of genetic and environmental determinants involved in the development of psychotic disorders. Monica also works with the TOP/NORMENT database in Norway, which is comprised of individuals with a psychotic or a bipolar disorder. All of these datasets include detailed psychological and biological measures of people with severe mental disorders.

Before joining the SGDP as a staff member in 2022, Monica worked full-time as a Clinical Psychologist in Oslo, Norway. She has also, until recently, held the position as an Associate Professor at OsloMet University, Oslo, Norway.

Research interests

• Stress
• Ageing
• Health
• Cognition
• Mental health disorders
• Resilience

Teaching

Monica is actively involved in the MSc Developmental Psychology & Psychopathology programme. She was the co-leader of the “Psychological Approaches to Treatment” PAT module in 2022/2023 and the 2023/2024 semester. In 2024/2025, she will be the lead on the Skill Development section of the MSc. She is also a lecturer on the PAT module.

Monica supervises project students at MSc levels in topics related to stress and mental health, and she is the main supervisor of PhD student Vid Mlakar. Vid’s project investigates the role of telomere length and lifestyle factors in severe mental disorders. Another person in Monica’s group is Dr Elise (Els) Halff. Els is a postdoctoral researcher exploring the role of stress on telomere length in stem cells from patients with psychosis and in healthy individuals to answer if people with psychosis are more vulnerable to stress on a cellular level than people in general. The stem cell stress project is performed in collaboration with Professor Deepak Srivastava at the MRC Centre for Neurodevelopment Disorders, Wohl Cellular Imaging Centre, King’s College London.

Expertise and public engagement

Monica is one of the founders of the Young Academy in Norway. She has written more than 70 publications on the role of stress and mental health; she has been a Guest Editor and a board member on several journals, including Frontiers and Psychiatry Research. She has received numerous awards, including the Brain and Behavior NARSAD Young Investigator Award.