Prof Carla Sharp, PhD, is a professor and the Associate Dean for Faculty and Research at the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Houston, USA, where she is also the Director of the Adolescent Diagnosis Assessment Prevention and Treatment Center and the Developmental Psychopathology Lab. She holds adjunct positions at the University of Texas, USA, Baylor College of Medicine, USA, University College London, UK, and the University of the Free State, South Africa. She has a longstanding interest in social cognition (mentalizing) as a cause and correlate of psychiatric disorder across the lifespan, with a special focus on youth. She has published over 300 peer-reviewed publications, numerous chapters and eight books. A large proportion of her research uses borderline personality disorder (BPD) and other personality pathology in order to study where social-cognitive function goes awry. As such, she has significantly advanced the scientific understanding of the phenomenology, causes and correlates of personality pathology in youth.

Prof Sharp is the recipient of the 2016 Mid-Career Investigator Award from the North American Society for the Study of Personality Disorders and the 2018 Award for Achievement in the Field of Severe Personality Disorders from the Personality Disorders Institute in New York. She is the current associate editor of the APA journal Personality Disorders: Theory, Research and Treatment and a member of the workgroup for updating the American Psychiatric Association practice guidelines for BPD. Recent developments in her work reflect a translational focus to carry through the earlier focus on mentalizing in order to evaluate its function as a mechanism of change in personality pathology, as well as other attachment-related conditions and an interest in the DSM-5 alternative model of personality disorder. Her work has been funded by the NICHD, the NIAAA, the NIMH, the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and other foundations.