Secondary Mentors

Dr. Jackson, Program Director of Training (PDT Primary Mentor), is a professor in the Clinical Child Psychology Program and a board-certified clinical child psychologist with over 40 publications on CM. Her primary role will be to oversee and coordinate all aspects of the training program including providing administrative oversight of recruitment activities, contracts, budgeting, onboarding, evaluations, grievances, and remediation. She has served as the PI on two R01 grants (R01MH079252, R01 MH079252) on CM and has been a Co-I with Dr. Noll as PI of the Administration Core for P50 Capstone Center (TCCMS) for the past year. Her work focuses on modeling the mechanisms of resilience for youth exposed to CM and the development of interventions to address the intergenerational transmission of trauma. She has served as the research mentor for over 50 doctoral level clinical students and has served as the primary mentor for two F-award fellowships in the past 8 years and a post doc. Her students have won numerous awards as a result of her mentorship including NSF fellowships, Doris Duke CM fellowships, APA and APS student fellowships, dissertation awards, and over 20 internal university research awards. In addition to her extensive and successful mentoring, she has held several administrative and leadership positions, including serving on the Board of Directors for Division 53 (Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology) for the past 10 years, being an APA Fellow for the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, serving as Chair of the Committee for Children, Youth and Families for APA and as Director of the Multicultural Scholars Program at the University of Kansas. She further oversaw the development of trainee competency evaluation for all students in the Clinical Child Psychology Program at the University of Kansas for over 10 years (for 50+ trainees), ensuring that pre- and postdoc students were trained to meet the needs of the field at a high standard. She has also served as a clinic director for over 12 years for a community training and outpatient clinic serving youth and families, supervising over 60 trainees. She is the Associate Director of the CMSN and is uniquely qualified to help direct the proposed training program. In her role as PDT she will oversee the administration of the grant: (1) coordinate recruitment, admissions and trainee evaluation, (2) lead the Professional Development Seminar and the CM Proseminar for the post docs, (3) provide oversight and coordinate as needed with mentors on training plans and intervene on training issues when needed, (4) review products of the trainees and coordinate evaluation of the training program, (5) coordinate All Track Meetings and attend Within Track meetings to ensure good program training integration and communication, (6) working with TLs to coordinate the teaching of HDFS 521a&b each semester and ensure trainee participation in Within Track and All Track meetings and (7) help coordinate the CMT32 Summer Institute. The PDT will coordinate policy activities (e.g., policy workshop) and will oversee community engagement projects.

Hannah Schreier (BBH) (BE, DP Tracks and BE Track Lead) Collaborators: Allen, Font, Jackson, Lunkenheimer, Noll, Shalev, Smyth, Wadsworth, Shenk. Dr. Schreier’s research focuses on the influence of early adversity (experiences of CM; growing up in poverty) on child and adolescent chronic disease risk, especially immunological and metabolic risk markers. She is further interested in understanding the psychosocial pathways through which family and youth characteristics alter the impact of early adverse experiences on key physiological outcomes among youth. Dr. Schreier is MPI of the TCCMS Cohort Study. She is also the PI of an R01 from NHLBI investigating the impact of a coparenting intervention on parent and child cardiovascular disease risk.

Brian Allen (Pediatrics) (PT Track) Collaborators: Shenk, Lunkenheimer, Noll, Schreier. Dr. Allen conducts research on clinical intervention with CM populations, with a focus on how developmental science can be integrated into clinical practice to enhance the effectiveness of treatments. He is the PI on an NICHD-funded study examining the use of Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) for maltreated youth and has conducted grant-funded research to examine the application of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) for adopted children and the development and testing of an intervention for children with problematic sexual behavior. Hi is Co-I of the TCCMS Administrative Core. He is currently supervising a postdoctoral fellow in clinical psychology and has previously mentored one postdoc and 4 and pre doc interns in clinical psychology. 

David Almeida (HDFS) (BE, DP Tracks). Dr. Almeida conducts research on daily stress and health and biological and developmental process related to chronic stress exposure. 

Timothy Brick (HDFS) (PADS Track). Dr. Brick develops novel ways to collect and model data in order to understand and intervene into the systems that underlie our day-to-day lives. His research uses passive data collection methods like wearables and computer vision in combination with active (e.g. self-report) measures to collect intensive longitudinal data about emotion and interpersonal interaction in everyday life, and uses advanced methods like data mining tools to understand how those processes change in cases of psychopathology, PTSD, childhood abuse, or addiction.

Kristin Buss (PSY) (BE, DP Tracks). Dr. Buss studies temperament and emotional development with particular focus on fear and emotion regulation. Her work highlights the importance of early individual difference markers of vulnerability and uses a multi-method approach including endocrine and autonomic physiology, EEG, ERP, and observations of emotion challenge laboratory tasks in young children. 

Orfeu Buxton (BBH) (BE, DP Tracks). Dr. Buxton’s research is on the health consequences of sleep deficiency, especially cardiometabolic outcomes, and the physiologic and social mechanisms for poor sleep health across the lifespan.

Sy-Miin Chow (HHD) (PADS Track).  Dr. Chow’s work focuses on developing dynamic systems methodologies for studying change and associated challenges such as missingness, non-stationarity, and clustered longitudinal data. She has applied dynamic systems methods in multiple collaborative studies to examine affect dynamics, child development, family processes, risk prevention, and promotion of healthy behaviors.

Dr. Claus is a cognitive neuroscientist who research focuses on understanding neurobiological mechanisms of alcohol and tobacco use disorders with the goal of translating these findings into more effective treatments.  Specifically, he seeks to understand how executive functioning, stress, and craving contribute to the development and maintenance of addictive disorders and to identify those mechanisms that may be amenable to change. His work has primarily used functional magnetic resonance imaging, but he has also used other approaches including transcranial direct current stimulation, electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and acute drug administration to probe these mechanisms

Christian Connell (HDFS) (PT, PADS Tracks and PADS Track Lead) Collaborators: Font, Crowley, Jackson, Noll. Dr. Connell’s research examines behavioral, health, and system-level outcomes of youth who have been maltreated or involved in child-serving systems (e.g., child welfare, mental health, juvenile justice), as well as the effectiveness of community-based interventions to ameliorate adverse outcomes associated with maltreatment and trauma. He is Co-I on the TCCMS DOC and has extensive experience in the use of integrated administrative data systems to examine risk and protective process associated with involvement in child welfare and related systems as well as the consequences of involvement on child and family wellbeing. Additional research examines the effects of exposure to traumatic events on child psychological functioning and efforts to enhance capacity for trauma-informed care within childserving systems. Prior to joining Penn State University in 2017, he served as co-director of Yale Psychiatry Department’s Division of Prevention and Community Research, and mentored 12 predoc psychology fellows, 15 postdoc fellows, and two junior faculty members during his time at Yale University. His research has been funded by NIMH, NIDA, ACF, SAMHSA/NCTSN, and state and local government agencies

Max Crowley (HDFS) (PT, PADS Tracks) Collaborators: Connell, Hymel, Font, Lunkenheimer, Miyamoto, Noll, Schroeder, Shenk. Dr. Crowley directs the Evidence-to-Impact Collaborative, a center within the SSRI. that houses the PSU Administrative Data Accelerator in partnership with the College of Health and Human Development. He is also PI of the Center for Heathy Children’s Dissemination and Outreach Core. Dr. Crowley’s research focuses on (1) strengthening methods for conducting benefit-cost analyses of preventive strategies, (2) leveraging administrative child welfare and related data to understand the fiscal impact of interventions, and (3) facilitating evidence-based policy-making through strategic investments in preventive services for children and families. Dr. Crowley is the PI on grants from the NIDA, NICHD as well as the Annie E. Casey, Laura & John Arnold, WT Grant, Michael and Susan Dell, Robert Wood Johnson and Doris Duke Charitable Foundations. Dr. Crowley also oversees the Research-to-Policy fellowship program, along with Dr. Taylor Scott, that provides doctoral and postdoctoral trainees the opportunity to work directly with policy audiences. Dr. Crowley often provides testimony and briefs Congress on issues related to the impact and financing of prevention strategies. Dr Crowley is also faculty on the PAMT T32 (NIDA) and Big Data to Knowledge (NLM) T32 training awards a PSU and serves as external faulty for the Arizona State University Prevention Training Fellowship (NIDA).

Lorah Dorn (NURS) (BE, DP Tracks). Dr. Dorn’s research focuses on adolescent development, specifically the psychological and biological issues relevant to pubertal growth. She also studies the role of psychopathology and substance use for youth exposed to stress and adversity. 

Chris Engeland (BBH) (BE Track). Dr. Engeland’s research examines neuroendocrine and immune function and the negative consequences on health of chronic stress and early childhood adversity. 

Rich Felson (SOC) (DP, PT Tracks). Dr Felson’s research examines situational and social factors related to violence, how types of child maltreatment are related to later criminal behavior, and the risk factors and consequences of sexual abuse. 

(HDFS) (PADS Track) Dr. Fisher’s work focuses on methods development for analyzing complex time-dependent measures of behavior and physiology. He is particularly interested in the joint modeling of behavioral and biological processes, the synthesis of multi-way data (cross-sectional, longitudinal and time-series), control theory, time-varying treatment effects, and statistical programming. 

Sarah Font (SOC) (PADS Track) Collaborators: Miyamoto, Connell, Schreier, Noll. Dr. Font is a Co-I of the TCCMS DOC and conducts research on the experiences and outcomes of children involved with the Child Protective Services and foster care systems. She is PI of a NICHD R01 focusing on innovative identification strategies for understanding the implications of various experiences within the foster care system for child health and wellbeing. Her work draws primarily on administrative data and prioritizes policy-relevant research questions. She has a postdoc who will start in Fall 2019.

Michelle Frisco (SOC) (DP Track). Dr. Frisco examines health disparities in youth and focuses on family and school factors related to health and well-being (particularly obesity) for adolescents exposed to adversity. 

Lisa Gatzke-Kopp (HHD) (DP Track). Dr. Gatzke-Kopp’s research focuses on the developmental neuroscience of externalizing behavior for youth and the biological and environmental factors including adversity exposure that shape neural development. 

Thomas Gould (BBH) (BE Track). Dr. Gould studies behavioral genetics and the neurobiology of learning and memory and factors that result in maladaptive learning and mental health problems. 

Chris Hollenbeak (Health Policy Admin) (PT, PADS Tracks). Dr. Hollenbeak studies the cost-effectiveness of interventions and applied behavioral health economics for health outcomes research, particularly in individuals exposed to chronic health adversity. 

Valarie King (SOC) (DP Track). Dr. King’s research examines the nature of family dynamics, the role of intergenerational relationships, and nonresident parents on health, wellbeing, and development. 

Derek Kreager (SOC) (DP, PT Tracks). Dr. Kreager’s work examines adolescent development in the context of social networks, and health-risk behaviors, specifically sexual risk taking behaviors and delinquency. 

Erika Lunkenheimer (PSY) (DP, BE Tracks and DP Track Lead) Collaborators: Allen, Buss, Panlilio, Jackson, Ram, Schreier. Dr. Lunkenheimer is an Associate Director of the CMSN focused on education and training of community engagement for PSU students in the CMAS minor. She examines parent-child relationship dynamics as risk and protective mechanisms in the development of self-regulation and psychopathology. Her specific areas of expertise include harsh parenting and CM risk, individual and dyadic neurobiological and behavioral regulatory processes, and dynamic time series analytic methods. She has been funded by NICHD, NIAAA, and the Institute of Educational Sciences. She is currently the Primary mentor to 7 predoc students and has one postdoc starting in Fall 2019. 

Sheridan Miyamoto (NURS) (PT, PADS Tracks) Collaborators: Font, Panlilio, Schreier, Dorn, Crowley. Dr. Miyamoto’s program of research is focused on the deployment and testing of telehealth models to decrease disparities in the quality of care for victims of sexual assault in underserved communities. In collaboration with multidisciplinary network collaborators, she also studies the identification of commercial sexual exploitation of children known to child welfare agencies. She is the PI of the Sexual Assault Forensic Examination Telehealth (SAFE-T) Center, funded by the Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime. She has received grants from PCORI, NIH, Doris Duke Fellowship, and the Center for Rural Pennsylvania. She mentors 3 graduate students currently and has accepted a postdoc that will begin in Summer 2019.

Paul Morgan (EDPSY) (PT Track). Dr. Morgan’s research focuses on youth learning problems, the etiology and over-time dynamic of learning and behavioral disabilities during early childhood as well as how school intervention impact academic and behavioral health for youth exposed to adversity. 

Dr. Noll, is a developmental psychologist and a Professor of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) in the College of Health and Human Development at Penn State. She currently directs Penn State’s CMSN and is PI of the P50 Capstone TCCMS. As PDT, Dr. Noll will be primarily responsible for coordinating the research efforts of the trainees, including identifying projects across participating faculty that fit and complement trainee interests, foster cross-collaborations, and support the realization of research products. For over 25 years, Dr. Noll has been conducting research to strengthen causal inference regarding the developmental and biologic impacts of CM through longitudinal, prospective research through continuous NIH funding. She has been the PI on grants aimed at discovering mechanisms that explain the association between CM and teen pregnancy and risky sexual behaviors (R01HD052533), abused females’ risk for sex trafficking through adolescent internet and social media behaviors (R01HD073130), cortisol dysregulation and allostatic load across development among abuse survivors (R03HD045346), and premature cognitive aging for adults at midlife who experienced childhood abuse (R01AG04879). She is also the PI on the longest ongoing prospective study of the developmental and intergenerational impacts of child sexual abuse that spans 3 decades and 4 generations (R01HD072468). As PI of the TCCMS (P50HD089922) she oversees and conducts cutting edge research on the role of biologic embedding of health disparities for abused and neglected youth, models of resilience, early detection of abusive head trauma, and predictive analytics of the public costs of maltreatment. In partnership with the PA Department of Human Services, she is the PI of a statewide controlled trial of a universal childhood sexual abuse prevention program that will reach 71,000 adults, 17,000 school-aged children, and 100% of at-risk parents in the child welfare system. She is President of APA’s Division 37 section on CM and is an American Psychological Society Fellow. Having been a T32 and K awardee herself, she brings ample mentoring experience as evidenced by the 40+ individuals she has mentored throughout her career including pediatric residents, Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows (SURF) students, graduate students, postdocs, K and F awardees, and junior faculty. Prior to her faculty appointment at Penn State, Dr. Noll was the Director of Research at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital’s Division of Behavioral Medicine where she facilitated the grant-related productivity of more than 20 faculty members. During her tenure as Director, the grant portfolio of the Division tripled to annual direct costs of almost $18 million. These experiences position her well to provide mentoring across multiple tracks as well as scientific oversight and administrative management of a complex training grant. In her role as PDR she will assist in the overall administration of the CMT32 and: (1) aid in the selection of trainees and trainee evaluation, (2) ascertaining trainee research interests and pairing trainees with mentoring team and research projects, (3) oversee research progress and productivity for all trainees (e.g., assure conference presentation, publication, and grant writing milestones are met), (4) coordinate the Ethics Seminar, (5) teach the grant writing seminars as part of her assigned teaching load in the Department of HDFS (HDFS 597), (6) coordinate the submission of grants submitted by trainees, and (7) help coordinate All Track Meetings and Within Track meetings. The PDR will also coordinate and conduct the Summer Institute.

Deirdre O’Sullivan (EDPSY) (PT, PADS Track). Dr. O’Sullivan’s work examines treatment interventions for individuals with disabilities and those exposed to adversity and at-risk for substance use disorders

Carlo Panlilio (EDPSY) (DP Track) Collaborators: Font, Lunkenheimer, Miyamoto, O’Sullivan, Schreier, Wadsworth. Dr. Panlilio’s research focuses on understanding the dynamic interplay between child maltreatment, context, and development, which shape individual differences in learning over time. More specifically, his published research explicates proximal developmental and learning processes impacted by early maltreatment experiences. He studies self-regulation and self-regulated learning, which mediate early adversity and later educational outcomes to identify malleable mechanisms for school-based intervention. He is co-PI on a Bainum Family Foundation grant to develop and test a trauma-sensitive curriculum aimed at improving pedagogical practice for early childhood educators. Dr. Panlilio currently mentors 3 doctoral students, has served on dissertation committees across disciplines, and served as a peer mentor for a current Doris Duke Fellow.

Andrew Patterson (Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences) (BE Track). Dr. Patterson’s research examines how metabolomics are relevant for adversity process (including child maltreatment) and the identification of translational biomarkers for individuals exposed to stress. 

Koraly Pérez-Edgar (PSY) (DP Track). Dr. Koraly Pérez-Edgar is the McCourtney Professor of Child Studies at Penn State University.  Her research examines trajectories of early socioemotional development from infancy through adolescence, focusing on early appearing temperament traits. In conducting her work, Dr. Pérez-Edgar has taken a multi-method approach involving direct observation of behavior, cognitive measures, eye-tracking, psychophysiology, and neuroimaging

Nilam Ram (HHD) (PADS Track). Dr. Ram studies how short-term changes develop over the lifespan and how intraindividual change study designs can contribute to behavioral science. He is working to develop multi-person extensions of intraindividual analytic methods applicable to the study of integrative data systems common in child maltreatment. 

Idan Shalev (BBH) (BE Track) Collaborators: Noll, Schreier, Shenk, Rose, Almeida, Buxton, Patterson, Ram, Sliwinski, Smyth. Dr. Shalev’s program of research is focused on mechanisms underpinning the biological embedding of stress, and their effects on health and aging. His research integrates the disciplines of molecular genetics, endocrinology, neurobiology and psychology. This systems approach integrates data sources across multiple levels of genomics, biomarkers and phenotypic data. As a Co-I on the TCCMS Cohort Study, he focuses on the effects of stress and maltreatment during early childhood. Dr. Shalev routinely provides training in his lab testing a host of biomarkers in blood, urine and saliva samples to elucidate biological embedding mechanisms in CM. His work has been funded primarily by NIH. He serves as a mentor for 3 predoc trainees in the NIA Pathways T32. 

Chad Shenk (HDFS, Pediatrics) (PT Track Lead). Collaborators:  Allen, Connell, Dorn, Noll, Ram, Schreier, Shalev, Sliwinski. Dr. Shenk is a licensed clinical psychologist with specialty training in trauma exposure and behavioral interventions for the pediatric population. His basic science research centers on improving risk estimation methods in non-experimental designs and identification of putative intervention targets following exposure to child maltreatment. Together, this research identifies trajectories, biomarkers, and mechanisms of adverse health using a multiple levels of analysis approach (e.g., biological, behavioral, environmental). Dr. Shenk’s clinical trials research therefore centers on the optimization of behavioral interventions applied following exposure to child maltreatment by engaging identified targets and mechanisms more effectively. This program of research has been continuously supported by the National Institutes of Health and multiple institutional and foundational awards. Dr. Shenk’s current training opportunities involve working with T32 Fellows interested in researching contamination bias in prospective research on child maltreatment as well as observational methods for measuring and quantifying dynamic communication patterns as indicators of resilience to psychiatric disorders following exposure to child maltreatment.

Martin Sliwinski (HHD) (DP, PT Tracks). Dr. Sliwinski examines how cognition and health are impacted by stress and emotion regulation and uses novel assessment methods to capture real-time effects of adversity on mood and well-being.

Joshua Smyth (BBH) (BE, PT Tracks). Dr. Smyth’s research addresses the effects of experiencing stress on psychological and physical well-being, assessing stress, affect, and health in an ecologically relevant manner that facilitates the understanding of biopsychosocial processes and studying psychosocial interventions to improve health and well-being. 

Douglas Teti (HDFS) (DP and PT Tracks).  Dr. Teti's research focuses on family processes relating to infant and early child development, with a long-standing interest in early socio-emotional development, parenting competence and parenting at risk. He is also Lead Faculty of the Families at Risk interdisciplinary research initiative which is dedicated to the study of parenting and family processes and their effects.

David Vandenbergh (BBH) (BE Track). Dr. Vandenberg’s research focuses on the study of molecular genetics and the genetic underpinnings of addiction and health-related behaviors. He has worked extensively with adolescent-aged youth at-risk for substance use and exposure to adversity. 

Martha Wadsworth (PSY) (BE, DP, PT Tracks). Dr. Wadsworth’s research focuses on risk and protective factors in children exposed to chronic stress, including the development and evaluation of interventions aimed at preventing psychopathology (including those that stem from CM) and physical health problems.

Dawn Witherspoon (PSY) (DP Track).  Dr. Witherspoon’s research focuses on the ways in which diverse families and youth are influenced by the contexts in which they are embedded, particularly focusing on how neighborhood, family, and race/ethnicity-related factors such as discrimination, ethnic-racial identity, and ethnic-racial socialization affect adolescents’ academic, psycho-social, and behavioral well-being. The crux of her research focuses on the neighborhood context and its relation to other proximal contexts for adolescents and identifies positive characteristics in multiple contexts that are related to adolescent well-being.