ABOUT

I am currently a postdoctoral fellow in the T32 PREMIER program at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine.

I completed my pre-doctoral internship at the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Psychiatry.

I completed my PhD in Clinical Science at the University of Delaware, working with Dr. Mary Dozier. The lab disseminates and studies short- and long-term outcomes of the parenting intervention developed by Dr. Dozier, Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC). I studied the psychophysiology of risk and resilience using event-related potentials (ERPs) and measures of the autonomic nervous system. My dissertation examined the degree to which prenatal opioid exposure is associated with infant autonomic regulation. I was funded by an NRSA predoctoral fellowship from NIH/NIDA (F31DA050426).

After growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia I studied Psychology at the University of Chicago. While there, I worked as an undergraduate research assistant at the Social Neuroscience Lab under Dr. John Cacioppo and Dr. Louise Hawkley studying the intersection of social relationships and health. At the same time, I followed my passion for addressing the needs of children and co-founded Project Harmony Israel, an integrated summer camp for Arab and Jewish kids in Jerusalem.

After college, I returned to the Philadelphia area and worked as a therapeutic aide for children with various developmental and other psychological disorders at EdBeCo and Child and Family Focus.

I continued my research training as a graduate student in Psychology at Villanova University in the Adversity and Resilience in Development (ARD) Lab under Dr. Janette Herbers and the Word Recognition and Auditory Perception (WRAP) Lab under Dr. Joe Toscano. I primarily studied processes of risk and resilience in families experiencing homelessness in Philadelphia. In 2016 I graduated with a Master of Science degree in Psychology.