Sean Cunningham, PhD

Dr. Cunningham currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Division of General Pediatrics, University of Utah School of Medicine. He sees patients at the University Developmental Assessment Clinics for ongoing care of medical and behavioral/psychiatric conditions. He has dual graduate degrees in clinical and educational psychology and is licensed at the doctoral level as a psychologist in the State of Utah. More specifically, Dr. Cunningham focuses on the assessment of children and adolescents with neurodevelopmental conditions at risk for behavioral and cognitive sequelae. He spends most of his time in direct and indirect clinical care evaluating the pediatric population across the three umbrella programs of the University Developmental Assessment Clinics; the Child Development Program (CDP), Neonatal Follow-up Program (NFP), and the Heart Center Neurodevelopmental Program (HCNP), which collaborates with the Intermountain Heart Center at Primary Children’s Hospital. Dr. Cunningham is involved with supervising and mentoring psychology graduate and post-doctoral students as well as teaching medical students and pediatric residents during clinical care and didactic sessions. Engagement with individuals’ learning also includes Dr. Cunningham’s involvement with the Utah Regional Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (URLEND). Dr. Cunningham’s research involves grant work within several agencies of the National Institutes of Health such as the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Pediatric Cardiac Genomics Consortium (PCGC), Pediatric Heart Network, Neonatal Research Network, in addition to the Simmons Foundation’s SPARK study examining the genetic causes for neurodevelopmental outcomes in children, specifically those with congenital heart disease and autism. Dr. Cunningham’s work has resulted in national and international presentations and publications.