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Stress and Emotion Lab Alumni
Amanda Chue
Amanda is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the Section on Mood Dysregulation and Neuroscience in the Intramural Research Program at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). In this role, she studies neural and behavioral mechanisms underlying severe irritability in children. She earned her BS in Human Development from Cornell University in 2010 and PhD in Clinical Psychology from American University in 2019. She also completed her pre-doctoral internship at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Boston Healthcare System. During her time in the Stress and Emotion Lab, she explored topics including the relationship between anger expression and depressive symptoms, the role of sleep in adolescent stress recovery, and the impact of stress mindsets on everyday stress appraisals and emotional reactivity to stress.
Alanna Covington
Alanna is currently on Internship at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center in Washington, DC. She received her BA in Psychology from Georgetown University in 2009. She completed her MA in Psychology at American in 2013 and worked in the Traumatic Brain Injury Department at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center until joining the Clinical Psychology PhD program in 2014. Her dissertation explores instrumental emotion regulation and co-regulation in romantic couples. More broadly, her research interests also include dynamic relationships between daily processes and sleep, and their ability to predict long-term outcomes.
Nick Forand
Nick Forand was a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Rob DeRubeis' lab at the University of Pennsylvania Department of Psychology from 2010-2012. Following this, he took a position as an assistant professor at the Department of Psychiatry at the Ohio State University. He is currently funded under a KL2 career development award to study personalized treatment approaches for depression.
Michael Greenfield
Michael Greenfield is a fifth year student interning at the Miami VA Healthcare System. He was a practicum student at both the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore VA Medical Centers. His interests are in public sector psychology, cognitive behavior therapy, and MMPI-2 interpretation. He has been trained in various evidence-based psychotherapies, including Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Social Skills Training, CBT-Insomnia, Cognitive Processing Therapy, and Motivational Interviewing. His dissertation centered upon the effect of sleep quality on daily emotion regulation variables. Methodological interests include multilevel modeling and programming.
Annika Hogan
(she/her/hers)
Annika is an undergraduate senior working in the Stress and Emotion Lab and is graduating in December, 2020 with a BA in psychology and minor in public health. She has worked as a research assistant at Assumption University studying the impact of chronic medical conditions on college students, risk-taking in adolescents with cystic fibrosis, and the effectiveness of summer programs in disenfranchised youth. She completed a clinical internship at University of Massachusetts Medical Center’s Emergency Mental Health Unit and a public health internship at The Action Foundation in Nairobi, Keny She is currently working on her honors thesis studying the longitudinal effects of stress mindsets. Her research interests include identity-based stressors, their longitudinal effects on physical health measures, and interventions for chronic health conditions.
Rebecca Kim
Rebecca is currently on Internship at The Catholic University of America Counseling Center. She received her BS in Neuroscience and Behavior from Columbia University in 2003. After completing her undergraduate degree, she worked as a development associate for a cancer research foundation and as a middle school science teacher. Rebecca completed her MA in Psychology at American University in 2012 and entered the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program that fall. Her current research interests include stress, emotion regulation, and the relationship between sleep and emotion regulation in adolescents.
Caitlyn Loucas
(she/her/hers)
Caitlyn is a current 5th year PhD student in the Stress and Emotion Lab. She graduated with a BA in Psychology from Colgate University in 2011 and worked in the division of Pediatric Psychosocial Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston before moving to the Developing Brain Research Laboratory in DC. Her clinical training is focused in pediatric psychology and, more specifically, among children diagnosed with cancer and other chronic illnesses. Her dissertation explores the efficacy of a novel stress mindset intervention on psychosocial outcomes, as well as on the relationship between daily stress and cognitive-emotional processes.
Elijah Murphy
(he/him/his)
Elijah is a current 1st year Master's student in Psychology with the Stress and Emotion La He received his BA in Psychology from American University in 2020 and as a member of the BA/MA program is now a full time graduate student looking to receive his Master's in May 2021. During his undergraduate years, He worked on research about different types of stressors and how stress mindsets will differ among them, as well as how different this would look for identity-based stressors. He also worked on research that studied the effects of different factors on biracial Black-White individuals’ racial identity choices during social interactions. He is currently working on his thesis that developed from his undergraduate research. His current research interests include anxiety and mood disorders, as well as stress, coping & emotion.
Jazmin Nieves
(she/her/hers)
Jazmin is a current 1st year Master’s student in psychology with the Stress and Emotion lab. She received her BS in Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2020. During her undergraduate years, she worked on research on depression, anxiety, and behavioral health outcomes of students in recovery. She also worked on research on the role of social support in sleep and depression. Her research interests broadly include positive psychology, behaviors and cognitions that promote a flourishing mental health, and the possible effects of these behaviors and cognitions on mood and anxiety disorders.
Aria Ruggiero
Aria Ruggiero received her BA in Psychology from Boston University in 2014. She is a second year Master's student and is working on her thesis, which will examine how sleep disturbances prospectively predict daytime mood and behavioral deficits in adolescents. Current research interests include the bidirectional relationship between sleep processes and depression, anxiety, emotion regulation, and stress and coping. She is also interested in treatment outcomes for an array of psychological disorders; particularly, anxiety, depression, and insomnia.
Lauren Skalina
Lauren earned her B.A. from Northwestern University in 2006 and worked as a research assistance at the Center on the Continuum of Care in the Addictions at the Unversity of Pennsylvania prior to arriving at AU. Her master's thesis explored covariation of positive and negative emotions in daily life in relation to interpersonal relationships and depression outcomes. Her dissertation focused on the unique and interactive effects of sleep and depression on neurocognitive outcomes. She completed her clinical internship in the Neuropsychology Track of the VA Maryland Healthcare System and graduated from AU in 2015. She is now completing a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in clinical and research neuropsychology at the War-Related Illness and Injury Study Center at the Washington DC Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
Maria Thestrup
Since graduating from AU, Maria Thestrup has worked at several university counseling centers including American University Counseling Center and George Washington Counseling Center. In addition, she also worked as a psychologist at the National Center for Weight and Wellness with patients struggling with obesity and a variety of disordered eating symptoms. She also served on the Board of the DC Psychological Association for several years and served as chair (and founder) of the Early Career Psychologist Committee of the DC Psychological Association. Maria currently maintains a private practice in Georgetown.
Sue Wenze
After finishing coursework in the clinical psychology program at AU, under the mentorship of Dr. Kate Gunthert, Sue Wenze completed her predoctoral internship (2008-09) and a T32 postdoctoral research fellowship (2009-10, 2011-12) at Brown University Medical School in Providence, RI. She joined the faculty of Brown's Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior in 2012, and in 2014, she obtained a tenure-track faculty position in the Department of Psychology at Lafayette College in Easton, PA.