Mentors & Projects

For prospective applicants to the program:

Many mentors and projects are likely to continue over multiple years. At the same time, projects may end or take on new directions, some mentors may pursue other commitments, and new mentors may join the program. In describing your interests in your application materials, please do not restrict yourself to the topics and projects listed here—aim to present the full scope and depth of your interests, as these may guide the recruitment of additional mentors and open up additional possibilities for you aligned with your interests.

2022 Summer and Summer + Semester Yale Research Mentors & Students

Mentor: Dr. Uche Aneni
Student: Sydney Eyster 
Summer 2022 Final Poster Title: Do certain parenting practices influence the utilization of substance use treatment services among adolescents with substance use disorders?

Mentor: Dr. Declan Barry
Student: Kendall Buck 
Summer 2022 Final Poster Title: Counselor terminological preferences among patients in methadone maintenance treatment

Mentor: Dr. Michael Bloch
Student: Ziyu (Susan) Wang 
Summer 2022 Final Poster Title: Comparative efficacy of pharmacological interventions for Tourette Syndrome

Mentor: Dr. Tom Fernandez
Student: Mehrael Ibrahim (Summer + Semester) 
Summer 2022 Final Poster Title: Genetics and biology of regression phenotype

Mentor: Dr. Dylan Gee
Student: Belle Morris 
Summer 2022 Final Poster Title: The effect of stressor controllability and anxiety on physiological and self-reported stress

Mentor: Dr. Emily Olfson
Student: Madison Reid (Summer + Semester) 
Summer 2022 Final Poster Title: Convergence of genetic findings from GWAS and a DNA sequencing study in anxiety disorders

Dr. Kartik Pattabiramin
Student: Mac Gortney 
Summer 2022 Final Poster Title: Experimental logic of isolating subplate neurons

Mentor: Dr. Marc Potenza
Student: Prisha Rajasekaran 
Summer 2022 Final Poster Title: Childhood trauma and neural correlates of monetary reward processing

Mentor: Dr. Carla Stover
Student: Carter McCaskill 
Summer 2022 Final Poster Title: The role of critical consciousness in breaking the cycle of violence: Investigating the effects of critical consciousness in parent-child interactions

Mentor: Dr. Denis Sukhodolsky
Student: Anna Püsök (Summer + Semester) 
Summer 2022 Final Poster Title: Brain correlates of anxiety in autism are moderated by social impairment

Mentor: Dr. Wan-Ling Tseng
Student: Yi Voon (Debbie) Lim 
Summer 2022 Final Poster Title: Negative parenting associated with child irritability across races/ethnicities, but parenting stress associated with child irritability in White participants only

2019 Summer and Summer + Semester Yale Research Mentors & Students

Intern: Hannah Sudhaker; Mentor: Jason Cromer, Ph.D. and Ana Kim, Ph.D.  Cogstate is a public company based in Australia and New Haven that specializes in cognitive testing including the development of computerized neuropsychological tests for children and adults. Involved in clinical trials around the world and in longitudinal studies of child development, Cogstate offers interns the experience to learn more about neuropsychological assessments in children and about the interface between neurodevelopmental research in a biomedical setting and work in a health-based company.

Intern: Matthew Hembree; Mentors: Jean Adnopoz, M.P.H. and Virginia Zecchini, MSW. Providing Home-Based Mental Health Services to Children and Families: Interns will have an opportunity to be introduced to the programs which deliver mental health services to children and families within their own homes and communities. Currently the Center offers 4 distinct models of in-home treatment including Intensive In-Home Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Service(IICAPS) for children with serious psychiatric disorders, Family Based Recovery, (FBR) for children whose parents are using substances, Intensive Family Preservation (IFP) for families with children at risk of removal and receiving protective services, and Positive Interventions for Families Affected by HIV/AIDS, (PIFA). In addition, Interns will become familiar with the York Street Family Clinic, an out-patient clinic developed as a step-down program for children and families who have received in-home services to maintain the gains they have made or continue to work towards goal attainment. Although the primary focus this summer work will be on IICAPS and the York St Family Clinic, interns will be welcome at all program rounds at which cases are presented and treatment strategies discussed. Interns are expected to participate in the intake and data collection processes and have an opportunity to participate in process and outcome analysis.

Intern: Adrianna Cygler; Mentor: Nicole Landi, Ph.D.: Typical speech and language development is thought to take place in this audiovisual (or AV) context, with both speech perception and production shaped by experience with the speaking face. This visible speech information impacts what typically developing listeners hear, both by significantly increasing identification of words in the presence of auditory noise and by facilitating perception of what is heard by speeding up cortical processing of the speech sound. Although developmental research and clinical practice tend to emphasize auditory perception, evidence suggests that experience with face-to-face communication is crucial for developing effective spoken language and communication skills. In this study interns will learn how to assess typically developing children with a range of social and communicative skill and in children with autism using both cognitive neuroscience techniques (EEG) and behavioral assessments. We use two novel audiovisual tasks to assess behavioral discrimination and neural signatures (EEG and ERP) of audiovisual processing and imitation.

Intern: Meeraal Zaheer; Mentor: Ellen Hoffman, M.D., Ph.D.: The intern will participate in projects aimed at elucidating neural mechanisms in autism spectrum disorders. The intern will gain knowledge of the genetic architecture of autism and learn about using zebrafish as a model system for the functional analysis of autism risk genes. The intern will become involved in projects that involve: (i) learning techniques for analyzing brain anatomy and the expression of neural markers; (ii) studying how disruption of autism risk genes affects simple behavioral phenotypes using this model; and (iii) identifying drug candidates that rescue behavioral phenotypes.

Intern: Abbie Klein; Mentor: Nick Turk-Browne, Ph.D. Hannah will join a team in the Turk-Browne Lab conducting research studies on developmental cognitive neuroscience. This will involve gaining exposure to the background literature, participating in weekly discussions about research findings and ideas, examining and creating computerized 

experiments, assisting with subject recruitment and data collection, and learning about data analysis and interpretation. Two specific goals for the summer are: (1) to learn about functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and how it can be used to study cognition in infants and toddlers who are awake, performing tasks, and having their behavior monitored; and (2) to assist in the creation of a centralized system with other investigators in the Child Study 

Center to recruit pregnant women and new families for behavioral and neuroscientific research studies through the Yale New Haven Hospital and affiliated units.

Intern: Caroline Sweetin; Mentors: Troy Brown, MBA and Babar Khokhar, M.D.: The intern in this position will be a member of the Yale Clinical Optimization Services (YCOS). Caroline will learn about process improvement and clinical redesign strategies in ambulatory practices. She will observe clinical operations, participate in meetings with key faculty members and staff, and help develop a final assessment report as part of the overall project. She will learn key optimization tools and the application of process improvement techniques to enhance the patient and physician/provider experience. She will also participate in the weekly YCOS meeting where she will have the opportunity to present her work. Lastly, she will have the opportunity to attend leadership meetings within departments as well as the medical school to learn about healthcare management and the complexities of delivering patient care in an academic medical center.

Interns: Tristan Carico, Kristina Kumpf, Lizzie Sands; Mentors: Marc Brackett, Ph.D, Dena Simmons, Ed.D. The interns at the Center for Emotional Intelligence will learn about working with schools to foster the emotional intelligence of students and adults in the school environment. The three interns will support our research staff in developing a suite of tools, strategies, and data points to assess the emotional health of schools. Specifically, Tristan will support on the developmental benchmarks project- a study to develop research-based benchmarks for children's development of emotion regulation skills, particularly cognitive reappraisal and positive self-talk, in early elementary school through high school. To support this aim, we are developing and testing two new assessments of children's cognitive emotion regulation. Data from these assessments will be used to build our knowledge of what types of cognitive reappraisals and self-statements children are able to generate and use effectively at different grade levels. Lizzie will be working on the school climate walkthrough, a project to develop a digital school climate assessment tool that can be used by high school students to measure their school climate and take action on making positive change in their school communities. The tool is designed to be used by a small sample of the student population who answer yes/no questions about what they observe in their building over the course of a day, creating a snapshot. Kristina will be supporting on the Momentary Emotion Assessment Tool- designed to benchmark students’ momentary emotions in regular classrooms and individualized learning settings and compare both settings in terms of the emotions they elicit, contribute scientific insights to the search for determinants of momentary emotions at school, develop brief in-the-moment interventions helping students to cope with their emotions at school, develop technology that assesses students’ momentary emotions and gives students and teachers in-the-moment feedback about these emotions in innovative ways.

Intern: Natalie Griffin; Mentor: Denis Sukhodolsky, Ph.D.: The intern in this position will work on studies of neural mechanisms of behavioral therapy for aggression and anxiety in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. The study of behavior therapy for aggression has completed subject enrolment and the data analysis are currently on the way. The second study of behavior therapy for anxiety in children with autism is actively enrolling participants. In both studies children receive comprehensive clinical evaluation of symptoms and associated psychopathology. Children also complete neuroimaging experiments before and after treatment to examine changes in neural circuitry of emotion regulation and social perception associated with reduction in aggression and/or anxiety. The summer interns will work with the multidisciplinary team conducing these studies and will learn about clinical research in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. Specific responsibilities will include help with guiding subjects through clinical assessments, data management, and literature reviews on study related topics.

Intern: Caroline Martin; Mentor: Carla Stover, Ph.D. This summer the student will be working on two projects: 1) the close out of a pilot study to develop and test a Fatherhood Focused Family violence Education Program (F3) and 2) a neurobiology of fathering study. The first is a modification of the court mandated program for men arrested for domestic violence currently implemented in CT. Fathers were randomly assigned to receive F3 or the standard program. Students will assist in data collection, entry and analysis for the last groups in the study. Second we are in active data collection for an EEG study of fathers that includes responses to infant cries and exclusion. Students will assist with recruitment, learn the data collection protocol including EEG and heart rate data, and assist with data management. 

Intern: Nick Manco; Mentor: Sarah Yip, Ph.D. Summer interns in the Yale Imaging and Psychopharmacology (YIP) lab will assist in on-going research into neurobiological vulnerability factors for addictions, and on the neural mechanisms of emerging medication treatments for addictions. Day-to-day activities will include shadowing fMRI scans, helping with data entry and analysis (including analysis of neuroimaging data) and with systematic literature review. Specific research projects may include analysis of neuroimaging data from young or mature adults with substance addictions.

Intern: Lily Scammon; Hannah Peterson; Mentor: Dustin Scheinost, Ph.D. They will mainly be working on the dissemination end of our new image analysis software (https://bioimagesuiteweb.github.io/webapp/index.html). This will include helping with software testing, documentation, how to videos, and engaging with end-users. There will also be opportunity to learn javascript and html programming and be involved with simultaneous fMRI/wide field microscopy project. 

Intern: Morgan Cuenod; Mentor: Michael Bloch, M.D. The Bloch Lab conducts clinical trials evaluating new treatments for mental health conditions across the lifespan including Tourette Syndrome, Depression, Anxiety, OCD and Trichotillomania. The Bloch lab also concentrates on statistical analyses that evaluate how well currently available treatments work and for whom using meta-analysis and other statistical techniques. A summer intern will participate in various trials examining ketamine and ketamine-derivatives for depression in adolescents as well as in other trials examining trichotillomania, tourette syndrome and anxiety. They will also work on an individual research project, which typically is a scientific peer-review publication (meta-analysis, primary data driven paper or review) with members of the lab team in an area of mutual interest.

Interns: Brandon Macon, Seriah Wyatt; Mentor: Erin Warnick, Ph.D. This project will focus on developing an understanding of systems of care and the various levels of care and types of services that exist and work together within a system. Activities will include working on referral resources, research methods of care coordination and strategies for linking families to services both within and across levels of care, with additional opportunities to observe at clinics and hospitals where our staff are engaged with services.

Intern: Nisha Sridhar; Mentor: Dylan Gee, Ph.D. This project will examine the effects of early-life adversity on behavioral and neurobiological development. In particular, the research examines frontoamygdala circuitry and its role in learning about the environment and regulating emotions. The research is conducted with participants ages 6-17.

Intern: Asyjia Brown; Mentor: Lois Sadler, Ph.D. R.N. Minding the Baby(R) Home Visiting Program- We are in the implementation phase of this work domestically and globally, as well as running longitudinal follow up studies of our original cohort of families. The summer intern will have the opportunity to assist us with data cleaning and data analysis of several small quantitative evaluation datasets from several of our dissemination sites. There will also be the opportunity to help with some start up activities for new sites and training/planning for the sites. Attending weekly team meetings and assisting with implementation monitoring and data input will also be part of the experience.

Intern: Morgan Beatty; Mentor: Richard Aslin, Ph.D. Work with Professor Aslin's postdoctoral fellow, Claire Kabdebon, and research associate, Lisa Jenkins on three on-going projects: 1. A NIH funded fNIRS study of adults and infants who view movies of simple and complex scenes as their brain activity in visual areas of the brain are being recorded. 2. A fNIRS study of adults and infants as they view animated faces and listen to speech stimuli that vary in their complexity. 3. An EEG study of adults and infants as they listen to auditory stimuli that vary in complexity. This study uses multivariate decoding methods described in a pending NIH grant.

Intern: Emma Maclean; Mentor: Declan Barry, Ph.D. The intern will work on projects related to opioid use disorder and chronic pain. The intern will assist the research team to (a) develop an interview to assess intergenerational patters of nonmedical opioid use and chronic pain, and (b) conduct literature searchers, analyze data, and write up papers for publication based on existing data sets involving qualitative and quantitative data collected from opioid agonist treatment patients and providers. 

Intern: Thomas Shao; Mentor: Wan-Ling Tseng, Ph.D. The intern will be involved in an fMRI study in youth with irritability and mood dysregulation. Specifically, the intern will assist with subject recruitment, preparing assessment materials, and data collection, and will have opportunities to learn about fMRI and its use in the pediatric population as well as fMRI data analysis and interpretation.

Intern: Gil Horner; Mentor: Danya Keene, Ph.D. The intern will participate in a qualitative study on pediatric medical legal partnership (MLP). Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) is a model of integrating medical and legal care to address prevalent health-harming legal needs among socioeconomically marginalized populations. MLPs are able to address social determinants of health (education, employment, housing, access to public benefits) and as such have potential to improve population health and ameliorate health disparities. Emerging research has documented positive effects of MLPs on both legal and health outcomes. However, less is known about the processes and mechanisms through which these outcomes are produced. In this qualitative study based at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, we conducted semi-structured interviews with parents who had received legal services through the hospital’s MLP, as well as interviews with medical providers who interacted with this program, in order to better understand the processes through which MLP may affect child health and well-being. Our interviews aimed to characterize how families experience and respond to MLP services, and to understand how MLP may shape provider behavior and institutional culture. The summer intern will participate in coding qualitative interviews and will gain knowledge about 1) social determinants of health in low-income populations, 2) interdisciplinary approaches to improving health equity and 3) qualitative research methods.

Intern: Kate Moffett; Mentor: Mary Madoule. The intern will be working on the development of technical assistance material for the Alliance for Period Supplies, a national network of Allied Programs working to ensure that individuals in need have access to period supplies. In order to support the efforts of community-based organizations, the intern will collect information to help raise awareness, build program capacity, and effectively distribute period supplies to those in need. The intern will have opportunities to prepare materials and present findings. 

Intern: Morgan Jennings; Mentor: Lynn Comer. The intern will be working on a program evaluation of the National Diaper Bank Network’s (NDBN) newest program, the Alliance for Period Supplies, launched in May 2018. The evaluation was aimed at investigating the impact of the distribution of free period supplies through the program to economically disadvantaged persons’ living in the United States and identify any positive outcomes experience as a result of the program. The intern will assist with the analysis and interpretation of the data and have opportunities to present her findings.