A Linear Path Posted on January 15, 2008 For Howard Abikoff (bio), his career trajectory took an unexpectedly direct route.

I’ve been working as a clinical researcher in the field of ADHD for 34 years. And way back when I finished my PhD program, I had no idea that this would be where I would end up. And I came to this through a bit of serendipity and fortuitousness. In my second year in graduate school I interviewed for a position as a behavior therapist working with adults with panic disorder.

Rightly so, I did not have enough experience back then to get that position. But Don Klein, Dr. Klein, interviewed me and said, “Howard, I’d like to hold your CV on file,” and I thought he was just being kind, and I said, “Thanks a lot.”

A year later, just when I finished up my PhD, I got a phone call from Don Klein’s wife, Rachel Klein, telling me that she had my CV and based on my background, it looked like I might be someone who would be interested in working with her on a project with children with hyperkinetic disorder.

I met with Rachel back in 1973, and there was an opportunity for me to take one of two positions, one as a clinical behavior therapist, the other as someone who would help develop a classroom observation system for children with ADHD.

I had some background in that area and took the position and began to work with Rachel and Dan and Sue O’Leary out at Stony Brook University on developing an objective measure of children’s behavior.

That brought me into the whole area of ADHD and also got me involved right at the outset of my career in an area that I had always been very interested in, which was the development and use of ecologically valid measures in treatment outcome studies.

So again I would not have predicted this 34 years ago, but I think my career path since then has been on a relatively straight line just building on what my initial experience was.

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