Claudia Buss is a Professor at the Institute of Medical Psychology at Charité, University Medicine, Berlin, Germany and an Adjunct Professor at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. She received her PhD in Psychobiology at the University of Trier and conducted her doctoral and postdoctoral studies focusing on early life stress and brain development at McGill University, Canada and the University of California Irvine, CA, USA. Her research addresses the effects of stress and stress-related biological (maternal-placental-fetal endocrine, immune, genetic) and behavioral (nutrition, physical activity, smoking/drug use) processes during human pregnancy on fetal brain development as well as other health-related infant outcomes like body composition, metabolic function and obesity risk. Her recent work has specifically advanced our understanding of the relationship between maternal-placental-fetal stress biology and fetal/infant neurodevelopmental trajectories by applying multimodal neuroimaging techniques. She is the PI of several NIH-funded and European based studies that focus on the mechanisms underlying developmental programming of brain development and the transmission of maternal preconceptual adversity as well as stress during pregnancy to her child.