Jeya Anandakumar
Jeya Anandakumar was an undergraduate student at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. Jeya and Kate began working together when Kate was a post-doc at OHSU, while Jeya was still in high school. Jeya majored in biology and minoring in chemistry with a focus on neuroscience. She is currently working towards her medical degree at Georgetown University School of Medicine.
Theresa Cheng
Dr. Theresa Cheng was a doctoral student in Developmental Psychology at the University of Oregon. She received her BA in Philosophy and BS in Biology at California State University, Los Angeles, and also holds an EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is primarily interested in understanding how adolescence may be a sensitive period of enhanced plasticity for social learning. This question has led her to examine puberty, stress, and different types of peer interactions in relation to the developing brain. A former middle and high school teacher, she is interested in the implications of developmental science in clinical and educational contexts. Dr. Cheng is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Harvard University.
Karlena Ochoa
Dr. Karlena Ochoa was a doctoral student in the developmental psychology program at the University of Oregon. Her research interests broadly focus on children’s social-cognitive development during the preschool years. She is especially interested in children’s moral development. More recently she has examined prosocial behaviors in friendship groups during adolescence. Before coming to University of Oregon, Karlena finished her BA in 2014 and MA at California State University San Marcos. Dr. Ochoa is currently an Assistant Professor at California State University, Fullerton.
Akhila Nekkanti
Dr. Akhila Nekkanti came to the Prevention Science doctoral program with a B.S. in Neuroscience and studied under the mentorship of Dr. Elizabeth Skowron in the Family Biobehavioral Health Lab. Her doctoral research examined the impacts of early adversity on children’s executive functioning capacities and resting-state neural activity. Her long-term goal is to delineate the type and extent of environmental enrichment necessary for enhancing lasting change in self-regulatory capacity in children facing early caregiving adversity and trauma. Dr. Nekkanti is currently the Associate Director, Center for Innovation and Research on Choice-filled Lives.
Clare McCann
Clare graduated June of 2020 from the University of Oregon with honors in Psychology, minors in Special Education and Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies. She is currently a graduate student in Jen Silvers’ lab at UCLA.
Aisha Ghorashian
Aisha was an undergraduate student studying Psychology and Political Science with a minor in Global Health. She is interested in public health, specifically in the context of child development, women’s health, and public policy.
Stephanie Gonzalez Villanueva
Stephanie was an undergraduate research assistant in the lab. She is double majoring in Psychology and Spanish and double minoring in sustainable business and Latinx studies.
Elizabeth McNeilly
Elizabeth McNeilly is a clinical psychology PhD candidate studying the intersection of adolescent development, digital mental health, and internalizing psychopathology. An overarching aim of Elizabeth’s work is to understand how the social, cognitive, and affective processes undergoing immense development in the brain during adolescence interact with digital contexts to confer not only risk for internalizing psychopathology, but also an opportunity for targeted intervention and the improvement of adolescents’ well-being.
Madison Root
Madison is an undergraduate at the University of Oregon pursuing a B.S. in Human Physiology with a minor in chemistry with the goal of obtaining a career in medicine. Originally from am from West Linn, Oregon, Madison is a proud recipient of the Pathway Oregon grants and scholarships. Madison worked with Victoria on a pre-registered study investigating how social status relates to mentalizing and mental health in young women.
Kellie Gunther
Kellie was an undergraduate honors thesis student in our lab, who graduated in spring of 2023 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Spanish. She is very interested in the developing brain and how early life experiences impact this process. Additionally, she is interested in social and personality Psychology and the ways in which individuals interact with each other and form relationships. Kellie hopes to pursue further schooling after graduation. Kellie’s Clark Honor’s College thesis examined the relationship between perceived social support and anxiety symptoms for adolescents in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Keegan Alvarado
Keegan worked with our lab in 2022-2024 to collect pilot data as part of a collaboration with Dr. Skowron’s Family Biobehavioral Health Lab. Keegan hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, where he is interested in researching the biobehavioral patterns that underlie chronic mental health struggles. He hopes to increase existing therapeutic efficacy by investigating mindful parenting, inflammation, metabolic function, stress, diet, and nutritional deficiencies. Keegan’s long-term goal is to expand upon Multisystemic Therapy (MST) to help at-risk youth and families achieve and maintain lasting wellness.