He joined us in 2006, after having worked in an emergency setting in Brazil, his home country, for a few years. Since early in residency Niels has been involved with numerous projects in curriculum development, training, clinical documentation, billing, and much more. He was the first resident in our department to enroll in the psychotherapy track of the psychiatry residency and is very passionate about it. Niels has spent most of his fourth year of residency doing therapy, and finds having the ability to combine psychotherapy to the use of medications absolutely essential. During his residency he had the opportunity to meet Major Sam Cochran, from the Memphis Police Department, who created a new model for training police officers to respond to people in crisis called CIT - Crisis Intervention Team. This experience inspired Niels to become involved with CIT and he later became a trainer for our local CIT program. Niels has assisted with the training of over 100 officers from all over the state of Virginia so far. This experience has led Niels to getting involved in advocacy, having actively served in the Psychiatric Society of Virginia. 

In his spare time Niels enjoys hiking, visiting Washington DC with friends, playing drums, piano and guitar. He also plays the flute and has a collection of 29 flutes from all over the world! His new passion is making glass art, and he looks forward to creating new pieces when he rents a studio in Charlottesville to do his work. After graduating in June, he will  join the faculty at Washington State University, where he will spend his time seeing students and the general public. "I feel very lucky for all that I have learned here, and owe it all to our faculty and the amazing supervisors I've had over the years", he notes.