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Faculty
CORE FACULTY: Barton Blais Corbin Cruz Davis Friedman Gewirtz Gonzales Kim Luecken Meier (Madeline) Meier (Matthew) Perez Wolchik
AFFILIATED DEPARTMENT FACULTY: Doane Ha Lemery Pina Su
EMERITUS: Chassin Crnic Karoly Lanyon
John Barton, PhD, Director of Clinical Psychology Center and Clinical Professor. Research Interests: Assessment and treatment of ADHD and LD children, adolescents, and adults; Child adjustment to chronic illness; Parenting difficult children, resilience, motivational interviewing.
Rebecca K Blais, PhD, Associate Professor. Research Interests: My work is focused on military service members/veterans and trauma. Within this program of research, I have three main foci: understanding (1) the impact of military sexual trauma (MST) on sexual functioning and relationship satisfaction in veterans, (2) mechanisms of distress and suicide risk among trauma-exposed veterans, and (3) how unique exposures (e.g., MST vs combat) are differentially related to PTSD severity, sexual function, and suicide risk. Projects/Lab: Military Social Science Lab
William Corbin, PhD, Professor. Research Interests: The goals of Dr. Corbin's program of research are 1) to improve our understanding of factors that lead to the development of alcohol-related problems; and 2) to develop effective programs for reducing alcohol-related harm. The first aim is met through a combination of a) longitudinal survey research on risk factors for heavy drinking, b) laboratory-based research on the relation between subjective response to alcohol and risk for alcohol-related problems, and c) laboratory-based research on the effects of alcohol on risk-taking. The second aim is met through prevention outcome studies targeting alcohol use and associated harms. Projects/Labs: Behavioral Alcohol Research for Clinical Advancement (BARCA) Laboratory.
Rick Cruz, PhD, Assistant Professor. Research interests: We study the intersections between culture and context (e.g., family, neighborhood) in youth adjustment, with a focus on substance use and mental health. In particular, our work aims to bridge gaps between mainstream clinical science on the etiology of mental health and substance use problems, and ethnic minority/multicultural psychology which has tended to focus on cultural and familial risk and protective factors. Current research studies focus on the ways in which culture may influence the development of self-regulation in part through the family environment. The lab also cultivates research in prevention and intervention, particularly related to substance use, depression, anxiety, and academic functioning. Our work focuses in particular, but not exclusively, on Latinx youth and families. Culture, Youth Development, and Intervention
Mary Davis, PhD, Professor. Research Interests: Situational, personality, and hormonal responses to stress and coronary heart disease in women. Projects/Labs: Emotion Regulation and Health.
Lauren Friedman, PhD, Assistant Professor. My research centers on understanding the etiology of childhood ADHD to inform interventions for the disorder. I examine the cognitive processes contributing to the core symptoms and functional deficits associated with ADHD through both experimental and meta-analytic techniques. I use this knowledge to optimize behavioral interventions for youth with ADHD using novel treatment adaptations and approaches. Projects/Labs: The HEAT Lab
Abigail Gewirtz, PhD, Foundation Professor in the Department of Psychology. Her research examines preventive interventions to strengthen families affected by traumatic stressors. With her research team, she develops, tests and examines the widespread implementation of parenting interventions for diverse families including military families exposed to parental deployment to war, and those affected by forced migration due to war or sociopolitical violence, among others. Projects/Labs: Adapt Lab
Nancy Gonzales, PhD, Executive Vice President and University Provost, Women and Philanthropy Dean's Distinguished Professor. Research Interests: Cultural and contextual influences on adolescent mental health. Her work includes research on the role of neighborhood disadvantage and acculturation on children's mental health and on how these influences are mediated or moderated by family processes within Mexican American and African American families. She also is involved in the development and evaluation of culturally sensitive interventions for Mexican American and African American families.Areas include: Culture / Ethnic Issues in Prevention Research; Prevention of Mexican American School Dropout and Mental Health Problems; Acculturation and Enculturation of Mexican American Children and Families; Contextual Influences on Adolescent Development. Projects/Labs: Culture and Prevention Research Lab.
Joanna Kim, PhD, Assistant Professor. Research Interests: Kim’s research aims to reduce disparities in behavioral health risk, identification, and service utilization for low-income, immigrant, and ethnoracial minority youth. She is particularly interested in implementation strategies to increase intervention engagement and extend durability of intervention outcomes for minoritized families. Projects/Labs: Engaging Families Lab
Linda Luecken, PhD, Professor. Research Interests: Health Psychology, Women's Health. Social, developmental, and personality predictors of cardiovascular and hormonal stress reactivity and vulnerability to stress-related illnesses. Projects/Labs: Postpartum Depression in low-income and ethnic minority women; Long-term physiological and health correlates of childhood adversity; and Health risk and protective factors associated with parental death or divorce. Health & Coping Lab, Resilience Solutions Group.
Madeline Meier, PhD, Co-Director of Clinical Training and Associate Professor. Research Interests: Developmental psychopathology of externalizing disorders; neuropsychological consequences of adolescent substance abuse; and cerebrovascular mechanisms linking substance abuse, neuropsychological impairment, and psychiatric disorder. Projects/Labs: Substance Use, Health, and Behavior Laboratory.
Matthew Meier, PsyD, Clinical Associate Professor, Co-Director of Clinical Training, Director of the MS in Addiction Psychology and Graduate Certificate in Addictions.
Marisol Perez, PhD, Associate Dean of Graduate Initiatives and Professor. Research Interests: Bulimia nervosa and the development/implementation of a cognitive dissonance eating disorder prevention program for college women; family-based needs assessment on adult and childhood obesity. Projects/Labs: Body Image Research and Health Disparities (BIRHD)
Nichea Spillane (Incoming faculty: January 2025), PhD, Associate Professor. Research Interests: Our work examines risk and protective factors within North American Indigenous populations including American Indians in the United States and First Nations in Canada and translating these findings to inform interventions. Largely, our work is theoretically driven by positive psychology principles and behavioral choice theory. Graduate students in the PATHS are encouraged to apply the training they receive on these projects to minoritized populations or other populations of interest. Projects/Labs: Positive Approaches to Health Disparities and Substance Use (PATHS) Lab
Sharlene Wolchik, PhD, Professor. Research Interests: The primary goal of Dr. Wolchik’s research is to advance our understanding of vulnerability and resilience among at-risk youths. Over the last 25 years, she has conducted research to identify modifiable individual- and family-level processes that promote positive adaptation to parental divorce or parental death. She has developed empirically-based interventions to prevent the onset and/or exacerbation of problem outcomes for youths who experience these family disruptions. Randomized experimental trials have shown significant benefits of these programs on a wide array of mental and physical health outcomes. Short- and long-term follow-up studies have shown that these positive effects last up to 15 years after participation. Her program for divorced families, the New Beginnings Program, has been recognized as a model program by the National Registry of Effective Prevention Programs and Blueprints for Health Youth Development. Dr. Wolchik is committed to bringing these evidence-based programs into real-world settings so that more children and families can benefit. Projects/Labs: Prevention Programs for At-risk Youths.
Affiliated Clinical Faculty and Research Interests
Leah Doane, PhD, Associate Professor (Developmental/Clinical). Research Interests: Daily stress experiences in adolescence and young adulthood, ecological momentary assessment of emotions and physiological stress activity, social-emotional influences on trajectories of physical and mental health over the transition to adulthood. Projects/Labs: Adolescent Stress and Emotion Lab.
Thao Ha, PhD, Assistant Professor (Developmental/Clinical). Research Interests: Her multidisciplinary research focuses on the development of adolescent and early adult romantic relationships. Ha investigates how partner choices, relationship dynamics, and break-ups among heterosexual and sexual minority youth affect their emotional (e.g., depression) and behavioral (e.g., sexual risk behaviors, substance use, and truancy) adjustment over time. Projects/Labs: @Heart Lab.
Kathy Lemery, PhD, Professor. Research Interests: Developmental behavior genetic approach, individual differences in appropriate and inappropriate emotional responding, risk and resiliency, parent and sibling influences, context effects, person-environment transactions, behavioral and biological measures. Projects/Labs: Child Emotion Center.
Armando Pina, PhD, Associate Professor (Clinical/Developmental). Research Interests: Intra-individual level risk factors in the development of anxiety disorders in youth and the evaluation of psychosocial preventive and treatment interventions for use with this population. Dr. Pina's work integrates ethnocultural and child-adolescent anxiety research and is aimed at developing empirically informed, culturally robust assessment and intervention strategies for culturally diverse youth. Project/Labs: The Courage Lab
Jinni Su, PhD, Assistant Professor. (Developmental/Clinical). Research Interests: Her research focuses on how genetic and environmental influences contribute to the development of substance use and related behavioral and emotional health outcomes in diverse populations, particularly during adolescence and young adulthood. Projects/Labs: Genes, Environment, and Youth Development (Su)
Emeritus
Laurie Chassin, PhD, Regents Professor and Director of Graduate Studies. Research Interests: Adolescent risk and resilience; and transitions from adolescence to adulthood. Longitudinal studies of the intergenerational transmission of substance use and cigarette smoking, and adolescents in high-risk families, resistance among serious juvenile offenders.
Keith Crnic, PhD, Professor. Research Interests: The psychological assessment in general and personality assessment in particular, focusing on areas that are relevant to psychology and law.
Paul Karoly, PhD, Professor. Research Interests: The development and use of a cognitive-motivational perspective applied to normal and abnormal adjustment and to physical health and physical illness. The model, called the goal, self-regulatory, automatized social systems perspective (GRASSP), seeks to understand humans as self-regulating systems organized around explicit and implicit goals. The model focuses not only on the functional capacities of human self-regulating systems (such as attention, memory, monitoring of self and environment, etc.) but on the content, structure, and operational dynamics of goals themselves. The conceptual model is currently being applied across a variety of domains including: health and clinical psychology, clinical assessment, personality, educational and vocational psychology. Projects/Labs: Star Gate Lab.
Richard Lanyon, PhD, Professor. Research Interests: Psychological assessment in general and personality assessment in particular, focusing on areas that are relevant to psychology and law. Current projects involve the development and validation of methods to assess response distortions (“misrepresentation”) during assessments in various forensic contexts, such as personal injury claimants, major felons, divorce/custody situations, etc. Projects: Validity of the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding and the Paulhus Deception Scales in forensic assessment; Development and validation of a measure of extreme virtue for the Multidimensional Health Profile Cognitive set; secondary gain, and progress in physical rehabilitation.