Graduate Students

Ami Ikeda earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of California San Diego and her Master of Arts in Psychology with a concentration in Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience from San Diego State University. Currently, she is a fourth-year Clinical Psychology graduate student at Emory University and is interested in understanding the genetic and environmental contributions in the development of substance use disorders. Specifically, she is interested in the relationship between teratogens and substance use. She is currently utilizing data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study to examine the relationship between maternal cannabis during pregnancy and childhood alcohol sipping. Ami is not recruiting undergraduate research assistants.

Natalia completed their undergraduate degree at UW-Madison, earning a Bachelor of Science in both Psychology and Neurobiology. They are currently a fourth-year Clinical Psychology graduate student, and their research interests are regarding stress and childhood traumatic events, specifically how stress/trauma may affect one's substance use later in life. They are interested in the occurrence of poly-substance use, and the motivations that underlie use of multiple substances at once. Natalia hopes to leverage epigenomic data to further understand the biological mechanisms of childhood trauma, developing PTSD, substance use problems, and depressive symptoms. They are currently using data from the Grady Trauma Project to examine the relationship between childhood maltreatment, DNA methylation, and comorbid symptoms of PTSD, AUD, and MDD. Natalia is not recruiting undergraduate research assistants.

Colette Delawalla graduated from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis with a B.A. in Psychology and most recently completed her Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology and Master of Science in Quantitative Psychology at Ball State University. She is a first year Clinical Science PhD student and is working to translate findings from pre-clinical work on compulsive alcohol use to an empirically derived model of compulsive use in humans. Colette plans to integrate her personality and assessment background with behavioral genetics methodology to address this question and others more broadly related to disinhibited behavior associated with harmful substance use. Colette is not recruiting undergraduate research assistants.

Emma Webster earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Wake Forest University, where she began her research in behavior genetics and substance use. She is a first-year Clinical Psychology student, and her research in the BGA lab will focus on how family dynamics within substance-using families affect child outcomes. Emma is not recruiting undergraduate research assistants.