Jennifer Yu is a third-year at Barnard College studying psychology. She is interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in clinical psychology in the future and is passionate about promoting healing and mental health awareness, especially among the Asian American community. 

Anna Fineberg, PhD, is a graduate of Temple University’s Clinical Psychology PhD program, where she worked with Dr. Lauren Ellman. She currently works as a clinical psychologist in Philadelphia. Anna’s research interests include the influence of maternal stress, infection and inflammation during pregnancy on offspring development and psychopathology. Anna is particularly interested in the developmental trajectory of serious mental illness (schizophrenia, depression). Clinically, Anna has enjoyed a diversity of experiences, including providing therapy for individuals with HIV and comorbid psychological difficulties, conducting CBT for social anxiety disorder, and providing individual, group, and couple/family services for veterans. Anna thinks of her experiences in the Monk lab, and especially Dr. Monk’s mentorship, as essential to her development as a researcher and clinician.

Lillian Foote, B.A., is a student in the Clinical Psychology PhD program at Catholic University. She graduated from Yale University in 2017 with a degree in East Asian Studies. During her time at the Monk Lab she co-coordinated the PREPP R01 study, which examines the impact of a multi-component behavioral intervention targeting pregnant women at risk for postpartum depression. Initially interested in cultural factors influencing family functioning, Lillian has broadened her research interests to focus on the role of various aspects of family environment (e.g., parenting, parent mental health, parent-child interaction quality) in shaping children’s socio-emotional development.

Sophie Foss, PhD, is currently a postdoctoral fellow in pediatric neuropsychology at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Her research investigates developmental risk and protective factors related to the intergenerational effects of maternal health and psychopathology on fetal, infant, and child brain development, neurocognitive functioning, and self-regulatory abilities. Her clinical training in pediatric neuropsychology has focused primarily on infants, children, and adolescents with perinatal stroke, spina bifida, epilepsy, and brain tumors. Sophie earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Long Island University in 2019. She was a member of the Perinatal Pathways lab from 2010-2018, primarily working on the Teen, Epigenetics, and NIH ECHO studies. For more on her research, please visit her ResearchGate profile.

Michelle Gilchrist is a student in the Clinical Child Psychology PhD program at DePaul University in Chicago, IL. She received a BA in Psychology from the University of Rochester, where she worked as a clinical research coordinator for Dr. Thomas G. O’Connor, before joining the Monk lab from 2010-2014. Her interests include the influences of early life experiences, specifically trauma and stress, on child outcomes and potential interventions to minimize negative consequences. Currently, she works under the supervision of Dr. Cecilia Martinez-Torteya on a project exploring the effects of prenatal intimate partner violence exposure and the role of mother infant attachment on child development. Working in the Monk lab played a significant role in developing Michelle’s research interests and she hopes to continue collaborations in the future!

Hanna Gustafsson, PhD, currently conducts research at Oregon Health and Science University’s Department of Psychiatry. Hanna was a Herbert H. and Ruth S. Reiner Postdoctoral Research Fellow working in the Monk lab. Her research interests center on the impact of stressful and frightening experiences on families with young children, as well as the psychobiological mechanisms through which stress may impact fetal and child development. She received a PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For more on her research, please visit her Researchgate profile.

Sloan Krakovsky, B.A., graduated from Emory University in 2017 with a major in psychology. She worked in the Monk lab from 2017-2019. Sloan coordinated the Johnson & Johnson study: a study that aims to asses the efficacy of a prenatal relaxation intervention incorporating maternal touch, a pleasant scent, and a meditative muscle relaxation practice as well as infants’ learning capabilities in-utero. She is interested in the effects of trauma on child and adolescent development and the correlation between micro-biome health and psychological health. Sloan plans to attend graduate school in clinical psychology in 2020.

Laura Kurzius is currently a graduate student in The Catholic University of America’s Clinical Psychology doctoral program in Washington, DC. She works with Dr. Marcie Goeke-Morey, who researches family relationships and the processes that underlie children’s social and emotional development within the context of the family. Laura has a particular interest in emotional skillfulness in marriage and will investigate the role this plays in the development of children’s emotional security and overall adjustment. Clinically, Laura has enjoyed a diverse range of training experiences, working with Children’s National Medical Center, The DC Superior Court, and beginning next year, the Kennedy Krieger Institute, an affiliate of Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. Laura fondly recalls her years working with teen mothers in the Monk lab; the valuable experience continues to inform her work with underserved adolescent populations.

Sierra Kuzava is a graduate student in the Clinical Psychology program at SUNY-Stony Brook. She started in the Monk lab as an undergraduate volunteer in 2011 and continued as an RA from 2012 – 2015. Sierra currently works under the guidance of Dr. Kristin Bernard, who researches the neurobiological effects of child maltreatment and parenting interventions for at-risk families. Sierra’s interests include the neurobiology of early life stress, childhood risk and resilience in the development of psychopathology with an emphasis on the role of parenting and attachment, and environmental and biological influences on temperament. Sierra received her B.A. in psychology from Columbia University in 2012.

Willa Marquis, PhD, is a graduate of UCLA’s Clinical Psychology program where she worked with Dr. Bruce Baker, who researches family processes and mental health outcomes among children with and without developmental disability (i.e., Intellectual Disability, Autism Spectrum Disorders). Willa is currently a postdoctoral fellow at UC San Diego. Willa has a range of research interests, including cultural influences on parenting practices and, more broadly, the developmental trajectory of parent-child relationships.  For her dissertation, Willa will examine how parent-child conflict unfolds from early childhood through adolescence and how observed behavior during conflict resolution relates to perceived relationship quality.  Willa has also enjoyed a variety of clinical experiences, including serving in a therapeutic preschool, facilitating exposures for youth with OCD, and supervising a beginning therapist in the UCLA school clinic.  Willa thinks back to her time as a Monk Lab RA fondly and feels that it has had an important influence on her research and clinical practice, though she can’t say she misses the New York weather :)!

Clare McCormack, B. Psych (Hons), PhD, has been a Herbert H. and Ruth S. Reiner Postdoctoral Research Fellow with in the Monk lab since 2016. She is also the 2018 Robert A. Burt Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience with the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University. Her research involves using mixed methods approaches to studying effects of maternal stress and trauma on mental health in the perinatal period, brain changes over pregnancy, and intergenerational transmission of trauma effects. Clare completed her PhD in Public Health in 2016 at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre in the at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Her doctoral research focused on alcohol use behavior during pregnancy, and the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on infant cognitive development.

Anika Mitchell, B.A., graduated from Williams College in 2018 with degrees in Neuroscience, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Public Health. She coordinates the NIH ECHO study that examines the intergenerational impact of the acculturation process in three generations of Puerto Rican families living in the U.S on aspects of neurodevelopmental, cardiorespiratory, and risk for obesity. Anika is interested in studying connections between social structures and neurobiological developmental trajectories in vulnerable populations. Further, she is interested in understanding how epigenetic modifications to stress systems impacts risk for psychopathologies, attachment, maternal-infant dyadic health, and immune system development. She plans to attend graduate school in developmental neuroscience.

Sinclaire O’Grady, B.A., is a doctoral candidate in the Clinical Science program at the University of California—Berkeley. She works with Dr. Stephen Hinshaw whose work focuses on developmental psychopathology, clinical interventions with children and adolescents, and mental illness stigma. She worked as a research assistant in the Monk lab from 2017-2019. Sinclaire coordinated the PREPP R01 clinical trial that examines how an intervention for pregnant women at risk for postpartum depression affects women’s mood, parenting style, and child development. She received her BA in Psychology from New York University in 2017. She is interested in the intersection of clinical and developmental approaches to understand the origins of depression and related disorders, the intergenerational transmission of risk related to the exposure to trauma and maltreatment, and how early-life stress affects trajectories of well-being in order to create early interventions. Working in the Monk lab was integral to developing Sinclaire’s interests and passions and she hopes to continue collaborating and visiting often!

Lauren M. Osborne, MD, is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Assistant Director of the Women’s Mood Disorders Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She is a native New Yorker who earned her B.A. in history at Yale and spent many years working as a book editor before attending medical school at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. Dr. Osborne earned her MD in 2009 and graduated from psychiatry residency at Columbia in 2013. She worked in the Monk lab from 2011-2014, first on a research elective during residency and later as an NIH T32 Research Fellow in Affective and Anxiety Disorders. Dr. Osborne is an expert on the diagnosis and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders during pregnancy, the postpartum, the pre-menstrual period, and perimenopause. She conducts research on the biological pathways that contribute to mental illness at times of reproductive life cycle transition, working particularly on the role of the immune system. She misses New York!

Alexandra O’Sullivan, B.A., LLB (Hons) graduated from The University of Adelaide (Australia) in 2012 with dual degrees in law and media studies. After practicing as an attorney, Alexandra returned to school in 2018 to study psychology. She now assists in the coordination of the NIH ECHO study, which examines the intergenerational effects of disadvantage in minority communities. Alexandra also coordinates a Johnson & Johnson funded study examining whether women’s prenatal experiences, including some women’s participation in a relaxation routine, are related to their moods and feelings about their pregnancies; whether babies can learn about their mothers’ prenatal experiences even before they are born; and how different prenatal and postpartum experiences may influence mother-baby bonding. Alexandra plans to attend graduate school in clinical psychology.

Ravi Segal is a Clinical Psychology PhD student at the City College of New York (CUNY). Prior to pursuing her doctorate, she taught at the Barnard Center for Toddler Development (2011-2012) and served as a Research Coordinator for the Monk Lab (2012-2014), where she investigated the effects of stress during the prenatal period in adolescent populations. As a meditation and yoga instructor, Ravi is committed to the academic study of mindfulness-based interventions, particularly with pregnant and youth populations. She received her B.A. from Dartmouth College in 2009.

Anna Seraikas, B.S., graduated from Union College in 2016 with a degree in Psychology. She coordinates an NIH funded grant investigating the intergenerational transmission of deficits in self-regulatory control. She is involved in the collection, processing, and analysis of both neuroimaging and clinical data. Her research interests lie mainly in investigating the neural mechanisms that underlie pediatric anxiety and OCD. She is particularly interested in the effect that early life adversity and anxiety have on brain development, and in turn, the use of different interventions to examine treatment outcomes and trajectories through adulthood. Anna plans to attend graduate school in clinical psychology.

Angelie Singh, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., was a medical student at the Medical School of International Health at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, in collaboration with Columbia University. She is conducting NIH supported research on nutrition, metabolic disorders and epigenetic outcomes during pregnancy. Angelie first became interested in nutrition and women’s health while studying for her MPH and MS in Human Nutrition at Columbia University. She met the Monk lab through her thesis work, which focused on dietary intake and mental health during pregnancy, and she has been under Dr. Monk’s mentorship since. Angelie is also passionate about global health and international development and has worked as a researcher on community nutrition programming, treatment of acute malnutrition and mercury exposure in West Africa. She received her BA in Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy and BS in Physiology from Michigan State University.

Julie Spicer, PhD, is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai. She was an Assistant Professor of Behavioral Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia and a recent recipient of a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health. With training in cognitive affective neuroscience and behavioral medicine, her research focuses on the consequences of stress on long term health, with a current emphasis on early life exposures. In the prenatal and early postpartum periods, there is rapid maturation of both neural and physiological systems in offspring. The developmental success of these systems has long term impacts on health, and maternal stress can affect such success. Working with time series data from functional magnetic resonance imaging and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring as well as longitudinal measures from the endocrine and immune systems, she examines how maternal stress-related psychological processes connect to biological responses, behavior, and infant health outcomes in the prenatal and early postpartum periods. This work has implications for the current pervasive national problem of socioeconomic health-related disparities. Dr. Spicer received a PhD in Psychology with a specialization in cognitive affective neuroscience from Columbia University in 2011. She completed postdoctoral training in behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center supported by funding from the T32 mechanism of the National Institutes of Health, the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, the Irving Center for Clinical and Translational Research, the Herbert H. and Ruth S. Reiner Fund, and the Nathaniel Wharton Fund of Columbia University. More information: Publications.

Andrea Vazzano, MPH, is currently a Health Policy Analyst for Futures Group, an international development firm in Washington, DC. She was a research assistant and coordinator at the Monk Lab from 2008-11, co-coordinating studies on SSRI use among pregnant women and stress in pregnant teens. She became interested in the experience of the teen mothers in particular, which led her to pursue graduate study in public health. At Johns Hopkins, she worked with Dr. Judy Bass to explore the psychosocial experience of HIV-positive pregnant women attending health clinics in Brazil. Over the past few years, she has supported projects in countries including Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Vietnam, focusing on using research and data to build more effective health programs. She credits her time at the Monk lab with giving her an appreciation of evidence-based practices and an understanding of the ways in which research can be used as a vehicle for change.

Lina R. Benson, M.S.W., M.A., is a former volunteer at Monk lab. She is a graduate of the University of San Francisco for her bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a minor in English Literature and African American studies (2016), a graduate of the University of Washington's Master of Social Work program (2019), and a graduate of New York University’s Master of Arts in Global Public Health, Bioethics (2023). Lina’s primary interest is in end-of-life and perinatal grief, loss, and bereavement.