Director
Professor
Link to departmental page
Graduate Students
Kiera James received her B.A. in psychology from Swarthmore College in 2015. She joined the BMDI as a graduate student in the Fall of 2016. She is interested in using peripheral and neurophysiological methods to examine markers of risk for self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs) in children and adolescents as well as examining cognitive and emotional responses in youth with different histories of SITBs. In particular, she is interested in examining the impact of interpersonal relationships on risk for SITBs, focusing on proposed mechanisms of risk across multiple units of analysis. Kiera is currently completing her internship at the University of Washington - Psychiatry (General Child Psychology Track).
Elana Israel received her B.A. in psychology from the University of Maryland in 2018. She joined the BMDI as a graduate student in the Fall of 2020. She is interested in targeting markers of depression and anxiety risk in children and adolescents. Specifically, she aims to understand the intergenerational continuities of these disorders and how certain vulnerabilities, such as information-processing biases and deficits in reward processing, develop in youth and contribute to internalizing symptoms.
Lab Manager
Holly Kobezak received her B.A. in psychology from Montclair State University in 2018 and joined the BMDI as a lab manager during the summer of 2019. She is interested in using multiple levels of analysis to explore mechanisms through which risk for internalizing psychopathology develops during infancy, childhood, and adolescence. After her time as a lab manager, she hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology.
