Alumni

Dalora joined the lab with prior experience in mental health and addictions counseling. She had also assisted with research in health disparities related to substance use outcomes and behavioral interventions to modify behaviors implicated in the continuation of substance use disorders. Her work was fundamental in the initiation of the lab, as well as the implementation of the MAPme Project. She is currently working as a Behavioral Health Care Advocate for UnitedHealth Group.

In addition to acting as a Research Coordinator on a study exploring the effects of trauma-sensitive yoga on posttraumatic stress disorder and depression symptoms with the Veteran Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) in Atlanta, Georgia, Karyle volunteered in our lab from Fall 2017 to Spring 2018. In particular, she assisted with the dataset integration across all laboratory projects.

Maddy joined the lab interested in examining the potential role of religiosity and social support in risk for substance use from childhood to young adulthood. These interests stemmed from her undergraduate study at Emory, majoring in psychology and minoring in religion. She worked with the lab from Fall 2017 to Summer 2019, first as an undergraduate research assistant and then continued to volunteer part-time after graduation. Currently, she is a doctoral student in the Clinical Program at Yeshiva University’s Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology.

Pamela Romero-Villela joined the lab in January 2017. During her time in the lab, Pamela worked on a genome-wide association study of individual symptoms of alcohol withdrawal to tease apart the unique and shared genetic influences of this wide-ranging syndrome. In addition, Pamela co-lead the beginning of the MAPme Project, a student-led study on college health and substance use. Pamela left the lab in June 2019 and started graduate school to pursue a PhD in statistical genetics that fall. Now, Pamela is a PhD candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder and studies how genome-wide and differential variation influences complex traits, with a continued focus on substance use.

As a Psychology major at Emory University, Andrew was interested in studying the relationship between social support, stress, depression, and substance use in African American adults. He was an undergraduate research assistant from Fall 2017 to Spring 2018, during which he presented at conferences and was the first author of a paper published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Upon graduating, he joined the lab of Dr. Aaron Heller at the University of Miami.

Jenani graduated from Emory with a B.S. after majoring in Neuroscience & Behavioral Biology and minoring in American Studies. She has continued working in the BGA lab as a part-time research assistant and focused on the identification of genomic loci for alcohol use disorder. She began this work in the lab during her junior year. She is generally interested in how stressors created by U.S. sociopolitical/socioeconomic policy may interact with neurochemistry to increase the likelihood of PTSD and/or substance use disorders, particularly in the case of institutionalized racism, trauma exposure, and marijuana. Currently, she is working as a coordinator at Partnership Against Dating Violence Prevention.

She majored in both Anthropology and Human Biology Major, as well as minors in History Minor. Being a part of a large family and having four siblings, including a set of fraternal twins, Clare intrigued the by the fact that siblings, who share genes and environment, can grow up to lead to different lives. She joined the lab specifically to examine how genetic and environmental factors influence the development of mental health issues, including substance abuse problems. Furthermore, she was interested in different environments and how socioeconomic status can influence these outcomes. After graduating from Emory, she became a Economic Development and Social Impact Associate at Shipt.

Skyra obtained a B.A. in Psychology at Emory College. She joined the lab as she was interested in investigating potential associations between stress and drug abuse within college-aged populations. She assisted in data collection for MAPme.

Nikhil graduated from Emory with a double major in Biology and Psychology. He joined the BGA lab in the spring of 2018, after graduating from Oxford College the previous fall. He is worked on utilizing differential gene expression data from animal research to identify a functionally optimal set of loci that can account for nicotine dependence in the population. He plans to attend medical school in Fall 2021.

Victoria began as an undergraduate in the BGA lab during her sophomore year while majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She graduated Emory College with her B.S. in Spring 2019 and began working as a Research Assistant for the lab. For her honor's thesis, Victoria examined the predictive utility of a multitrait polygenic risk score model using known genetic correlates of nicotine dependence. More generally, she is interested in how developmental time periods and stress interact with genetics to impact drug use outcomes. Victoria is currently applying for medical school to pursue a career as a doctor.

Haley graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience. She was an Master of Public Health student in the Epidemiology Department at Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. In the lab, she was particularly interested in learning how social factors influence the incidence of health conditions across different populations and how they affect individuals’ lifetime health habits. She worked on MAPme data analysis and project planning. Upon earning her Masters, she became an epidemiologist for an Opioid/Overdose Response and Reduction Program.

Yijin earned her BSN degree in Shanghai Jiaotong University, in China and MPH in Epidemiology at Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. She is interested in applying various longitudinal methods to better build models to predict how kids and teens’ psychological and physical status will develop. She was a lead on the MAPme team conducting data management-related activities, such as data manipulation, data cleaning, data preparation, data analyst and data visualization in R and R markdown for the project. She is currently a Biostatistician at Emory University and Children's Healthcare of America.

James Swanson graduated from Emory University in 2021 with a degree in Biology. He worked in the lab from March 2018 to September 2019. His first research project looked at the prevalence and correlates of intimate partner abuse experienced among Emory Students. For his second project, he used the MAPme data to look at whether current GAD symptoms were associated with one's cumulative experience of traumatic events. Currently, he is a medical student at Loyola Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, and is interested in pursuing a surgical specialty.

Ronaldo recently graduated from Texas A&M University with a BA in Psychology. He worked in the BGA Lab during the summer of 2020 through Emory's LGS Soar Program. He is interested in attending graduate school and studying cognitive processes such as attention, decision making, and how they are involved in risky behavior.

Keland Yip graduated from Emory University in 2021 with a B.A. in Sociology and Global Health, Culture, & Society. He worked in the lab from Spring 2018 to Fall 2020. While in the lab, Keland primarily worked on the pilot MAPme study and was initially involved in a sub-study investigating the relationship between various types of trauma and depression. He later transitioned to supporting the study’s media and community outreach presence. While at Emory, Keland also conducted research on topics surrounding the social determinants of health. Currently, Keland is working as a clinical research coordinator at the University of Washington School of Medicine and will be attending medical school in Fall 2022.

Caroline Catherman worked in the lab from August 2018 to May 2020, when she graduated from Emory. While in the lab, she was first a MAPME ambassador then moved on to conduct a research study on how sleep, depression, and neuroticism interact, which was published in a research journal. After graduating from Emory, Caroline combined her love of creative writing and science. She got an M.S. in Journalism with a concentration in science, health, and environmental reporting from Northwestern University. She then got a journalism job reporting on science and health at the Orlando Sentinel in Orlando, FL.

Maia Choi graduated from Emory University in 2020. She started working in the lab when she attended Oxford College to remotely assist with data collect at the Oxford site as a MAPme Ambassador. After graduating from Oxford in 2019 and upon starting at Emory, she helped to expand data collection to Kennesaw State University and by developing outreach materials for MAPme participants. Additionally, she started working as an Undergraduate Research Assistant and fostered an interest in examining risk factors (e.g., stress and internalizing disorders) for substance use among college students. She continued this work following her graduation for a semester as a staff Research Assistant. Currently, she is a pursuing a PhD in Behavioral & Systems Neuroscience at Rutgers University, under the guidance of Dr. Danielle Dick.

Anjali Agarwal graduated from Emory University in 2020. She was a member of the lab beginning in January 2018 up until her graduation, starting as a MAPme Ambassador, later also becoming an Undergraduate Research Assistant. During this time, she assisted in participant recruitment and data collection. She also assisted with the data analysis and poster creation for various projects that utilized MAPme data. Currently, she is a postgraduate student in Psychology at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.

Ayushi Agarwal graduated from Emory University in 2021 with a bachelor’s in Psychology. She joined the lab in Spring 2018, while enrolled in a class taught by Dr. Palmer, and remained a member of the lab until her graduation. When she joined the lab, she was a MAPme Ambassadaor and later became an Undergraduate Research Assistant. Her research interests are in the psychosocial correlates of alcohol and other substance use. She is planning on pursuing a masters or PhD in Psychology.

Sri Ponnazhagan graduated from Emory University in 2021. He started in the lab in Fall 2018 and was a member until his graduation. As a MAPme Ambassador, he examined the relationship between trauma and depression, using MAPme data. During his later years in the lab, as an Undergraduate Research Assistant, he conducted independent research projects that focused on substance use and executive functioning. Currently, he is a medical student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, having started in Fall 2021.

Priya Yadav graduated from Emory University in 2022, with a bachelor’s in Psychology. She was a member of the lab from Spring 2021 to Spring 2022. During her time in the lab, she examined the effectiveness of social media on recruitment strategies for psychological research.

Matthew Gordon graduated from Georgia State University. He was a member of the lab from Spring 2021 to Spring 2022. During his time in the lab, he helped with holding focus group discussions regarding the barriers to participation in genomics research by college-aged members of minority racial and ethnic groups. He will be starting a PsyD program at Loyola University Maryland in Fall 2022.

Javier Losada Radley graduated from Emory University in 2021, with a bachelor's in Psychology and on the pre-med track. He joined the lab in the Summer of 2020 and was a member until Spring 2022 since he continued on as a Staff Research Assistant once he graduated. During his time in the lab, he helped with focus groups discussions, participant compensation, and he conducted independent research on participant retention strategies. Currently, he is an Associate Product Manager for PadSplit, an Atlanta-based startup that helps with affordable housing solutions.

Margy Chen graduated from Emory University in 2022. She was a member of the lab from Summer 2020 to Spring 2022. During her time in the lab, she examined the the association between prescription opioid misuse and mood disorders with data from NSDUH 2019. She will be starting a Social Psychology PhD program at the University of Colorado Boulder in Fall 2022.

Jamaiica Hurston graduated from Emory University in 2022, with a bachelor’s in Psychology. She was a member of the lab from Spring 2021 to Spring 2022. During her time in the lab, she examined the relationship between stress coping strategies and polysubstance use. Currently, she is working as a Clinical Research Coordinator at the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases in the Section on Ethnicity and Health, and plans to eventually attend medical school.

Samantha Cassidy graduated from Emory University in 2021 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. As an undergraduate student, she was a MAPme Ambassador and an Undergraduate Research Assistant, conducting several independent research projects. Samantha’s honors thesis examined the association between the polygenic risk scores of the Big Five personality factors, lifetime repeated cannabis use, and cannabis use disorder and their respective phenotypes in cannabis users of European ancestry. Her research interests are focused on the predictors of substance use behaviors, particularly psychopathologies. Currently, she was a Laboratory Assistant, working on a project that examines the association between the genetic risk for alcohol use and PTSD with drinking behaviors in African Americans. Samantha will be attending Kent State University starting in Fall 2022 to earn her PhD in Clinical Psychology, under the supervision of Dr. William Lechner.

Lauren Bertin graduated from Bennington College with a B.A. in Science and Scientific Communication. While obtaining a second bachelor’s degree in Psychology at the City University of New York at Hunter College, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Joel Erblich and became particularly interested in the etiology and development of substance use disorders. She hopes to advance personalized prevention practices and treatment by leveraging behavioral genetics to unravel individual differences that persistently emerge in the study of addiction. Lauren investigated the interplay between executive functioning, self-regulation, and problematic substance use.

Anna Biglaiser studied Psychology and Human Health. Anna was interested in the genetic and environmental influences of substance use, with a particular focus on the prenatal environment. Anna worked under Ami Ikeda

Emerald Yuan studied Psychology at Emory University. Her research interests were in how genetic predispositions interact with substance use and mood disorders. She assisted Ami Ikeda in interpreting prenatal cannabis birth outcomes in ABCD study.

Alan Sherman studied Psychology at Emory University. His research interests included social psychology/development. He helped with recruiting participants for our Wave 9 survey and assisting lab members with literature reviews.

Haokun Cheng studied Quantitative Science Informatics at Emory University. His research interests included data analysis and processing. He is worked with data cleaning and visualization for the MAPme program.

Katherine Miller graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo with minors in Biology and Philosophy, and is pursuing a PhD in Clinical Psychology. Her research interests are adolescent depression and anxiety, specifically in improving treatment quality and accessibility. She worked largely in participant recruitment efforts for the MAPme Study on Emory’s campus, as well as on the campuses of the lab’s collaborators.

William Ma is a senior at Emory University, majoring in Psychology and Business Administration. His research interests include hormonal coupling and reactivity under social-evaluative stress as well as genetic and environmental predisposition in polysubstance use. He is currently mentoring under Natalia Jaume-Feliciosi to investigate the epigenetic mechanisms underlying learning and inheritance of acquired behaviors.

Kathleen Martin went to the University of Minnesota for her Bachelor of Science degree. In Minnesota, she worked at the Minneapolis VA and the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research where she first became acquainted with behavioral genetics. Currently, she is a fourth-year student in the Clinical Psychology PhD program at Emory University and is interested in behavioral genetic contributions of internalizing and externalizing disorders. She is especially interested in genetic and environmental predictors of opioid use/misuse. Her current projects focus on the overlapping genetic and behavioral architecture of mood/anxiety disorders and opioid use behaviors.