People

Present

David Almeida, Ph.D

Dave (pronouns: he/him/his) is a life-span developmental psychologist with a primary focus on stress and coping during middle adulthood. His research examines the effects of biological and self-reported indicators of stress on health. While his primary interest has been the role of daily stress on healthy aging, he has also examined stress processes in specific populations and contexts, such as the workplace and family interactions, parents of children with developmental disabilities, and family caregivers. His research has shown that minor yet frequent daily stressors are often better predictors of important health outcomes than major life events, which have been the focus of research for decades. To further his research in this area, he developed an instrument, the Daily Inventory of Stressful Experiences, that has been used in large scale epidemiologic and intervention studies on health and well-being. Dave has received continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health since 1996, and has received funding from many other agencies as well, including the German Research Council, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the W.T Grant Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In addition to NSDE, he also directs the Workplace Practices and Daily Family Well-Being Project, a component of the Work, Family, Health Study (https://workfamilyhealthnetwork.org/), and is a Co-PI for the QUick Interventions Nomographically-tailored for Cognitions and Emotions [QUINCE] Project, a component of the Science and Behavior Change Study (https://scienceofbehaviorchange.org/). Email: dma18@psu.edu

Aarti Bhat

Aarti (pronouns: she/her/hers) is a graduate student in Human Development and Family Studies and Demography. Her research interests focus on health disparities across the life course. Email: acb6009@psu.edu

Eric Cerino, Ph.D

Eric (pronouns: he/him/his) is an Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences at Northern Arizona University. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the NIA T32 Pathways Program. His research leverages microlongitudinal and measurement-burst methodologies using daily diary and ecological momentary assessments to study cognitive and emotional functioning in everyday life. The primary goal of Eric’s research is to use intensive repeated measurement techniques to advance dementia screening efforts and inform development of tailored interventions for optimizing cognitive health in older adults. Email: eric.cerino@nau.edu

Natalie Cramer

Natalie (pronouns: she/her/hers) is a research technologist in the Center for Healthy Aging. She earned her BS and MS in Entomology from Oklahoma State University and continues to keep insects as office pets. Email: nag179@psu.edu

Maria Kurth

Sun Ah Lee, Ph.D

Sun Ah (pronouns: she/her/hers) is a Ph.D student in Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State. Her research interests are in the intersections between healthy aging, daily experiences, and methodology. She is interested in examining psychosocial and health-behavioral factors of physical health outcomes (e.g., multimorbidity, mortality) as well as biological pathways under this relationship. Email: sbl5704@psu.edu

Sara Miller

Sara (pronouns: she/her/hers) is a predoctoral fellow in the NIA T32 Pathways Program. Her research centers around the predictors and consequences of alcohol and substance use during midlife and older adulthood. She is interested in assessing the psychosocial factors of late-onset problem drinking. Moreover, she hopes to evaluate how various measures of alcohol use (e.g., quantity vs pattern of use) differentially predict health functioning. In the Pathways Program, Sara will be investigating the pathways connecting alcohol use with biological markers of health outcomes and the psychosocial factors influencing how different measures of alcohol use predict worsening health functioning. Email: sem588@psu.edu

Jacqueline Mogle, Ph.D

Jacqueline’s (pronouns: she/her/hers) research focuses on promoting health and well-being in older adults and identifying early indicators of changes in psychological and cognitive health associated with normative and non-normative aging. Her current projects examine psychological and behavioral risk factors associated with the development of early cognitive decline. These projects are designed to uncover early intervention targets for older adults prior to precipitous declines in everyday cognitive functioning. A second line of research involves assessing performance-based and self-reported cognition at the daily level using daily diaries. Using innovative methodological techniques, her ultimate goal is the development of measurement tools that will allow providers to direct older adults to tailored interventions that are the best fit based on the unique risk profile of the individual. Email: jam935@psu.edu

Jeongmin Park

Lauren Petri

Jonathan Rush, Ph.D

Jonathan (pronouns: he/him/his) is a postdoctoral fellow funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). His research interests focus on utilizing intensive longitudinal designs to improve measurement of both within-person processes and between-person differences in health and well-being, and to address questions of individual change and variation over multiple timescales across the lifespan. He applies a variety of advanced methodological approaches to link short-term daily processes to long-term health outcomes. Email: jkr5814@psu.edu

Riki Slayday

Riki (pronouns: she/her/hers) received her BA in Psychology with honors from San Diego State University in 2020 and was an Advancing Diversity in Aging Research (ADAR) scholar. Riki is a Joseph and Jean Britton Distinguished Graduate Fellow in Human Development and Family Studies. Her research interests are broadly in the psychosocial and biological determinants of health disparities in aging. Follow her on Twitter (@RikiSlayday). Email: rslayday@psu.edu

Karina Van Bogart

Dakota Witzel

Didar Zeytun

Past

Sean Banks (Austin, Texas)

Lizbeth “Libby” Benson

Libby (pronouns: she/her/hers) received a BA in Psychology with honors from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2011 and spent the next three years working as a research coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center. Currently she is a doctoral candidate in the department of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State, working under the mentorship of Dr. Nilam Ram. Libby integrates developmental systems theories, data from (intensive) longitudinal study designs, and dynamic systems models to advance the knowledge base on processes related to health and well-being in daily life and across the life span. Data visualization is also an important component of her work, as a way to better understand these processes, generate new ideas, and use as a tool for scientific communication. Libby’s future research goals include using findings generated from her basic science research to develop computational models for person-specific, context and time sensitive mobile health (mHealth) programs. Email: leb237@psu.edu

Hye Won Chai, Ph.D

Hye Won (pronouns: she/her/hers) graduated from Penn State in Summer 2020 with dual-title Ph.D in Human Development and Family Studies & Demography. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin Population Research Center. Her research focuses on family and social relationships of middle and older adults and their associations with physical health outcomes in later life. She is particularly interested in examining how the dynamics of social relationships and health unfold across different time scales, connecting daily interactions to long-term health outcomes. Her interest also includes studying the role of SES characteristics, educational attainment in particular, in the associations between social relationships and health. Find updates related to her work on her website (http://hyewonchai.weebly.com/). Email: hye.chai@austin.utexas.edu

Amy Chandler (U of Arizona)

Kelly Chandler (Oregon State)

Kelly Cichy (Kent State)

Natasha Demetriava (Northern AZ)

Lesa Hoffman (U of Iowa)

Joanna Hong

Joanna (pronouns: she/her/hers) is a postdoctoral fellow in the NIA T32 Pathways Program. Her overarching goal is to build a program of research that informs intervention efforts and policy that improves the health of our rapidly growing older adult population. Her research integrates health, social, developmental psychology, epidemiology, biology, biostatistics, and translational science. In addition to basic research, Joanna is committed to translational research and works with various non-academic partners (e.g., AARP, UnitedHealthcare, IDEO, Thrive Health). In the Pathways Program, Joanna will identify and examine daily psychosocial factors that influence health and well-being outcomes and investigate potential biological pathways that explain these associations. Email: jhh5281@psu.edu

Melanie Horn-Mallers (Cal State Fullerton)

August Jenkins

August (pronouns: she/her/hers) is a postdoctoral scholar in Family Diversity in the Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) department at the University of Illinois- Urbana Champaign. She received her Ph.D in HDFS at Penn State, and she was also an NRSA F31 Predoctoral Diversity Fellow, supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Her interests include the intersections between romantic relationship functioning and psychological health among Black couples and families from both a socio-ecological and gendered perspective. Find updates related to her work on https://augustjenkins.weebly.com/ or follow her on twitter (@AugustJenkins5). Email: acj5@psu.edu

Jeremey Jorgeson (Brigham Young)

Heather King (Duke)

Rachel Koffer (Arizona State)

Jooyoung Kong (U of Wisconsin)

Soomi Lee (Penn State)

Dan McDonald (U of Arizona)

Michelle Neiss (Portland, Oregon)

Shevaun Neupert (NC State)

Erica O’Brien, Ph.D

Erica’s (pronouns: she/her/hers) research generally focuses on how we can facilitate improvements in health-related outcomes, such as well-being as well as cognitive and physical functioning in older adults. Specifically, she studies the psychological, social cognitive, and emotional factors that keep older adults active and engaged in daily activities associated with these health benefits. These include internal factors, such as motivation, aging attitudes, goals and motives, as well as external factors, such as social support, environmental constraints, and task-related characteristics. As a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Pathways Program, Erica investigated (a) the pathways by which psychological and ability variables affect or are affected by training and intervention, (b) the health and ability outcomes most affected, (c) the temporal context surrounding these associations (e.g., immediate or delayed, fleeting or enduring), and (d) the characteristics of individuals likely to benefit—or not—from applied programs. Email: eml5781@psu.edu

Jennifer Piazza (Cal State Fullerton)

Tina Savla (Virgina Tech)

Joyce Serido (U of Illinois, Urbana)

Nancy Sin (UBC)

Carlie Sloan

Carlie (pronouns: she/her/hers) earned her BA in Psychology from the University of Notre Dame. As a doctoral student in the Human Development and Family Studies department, her research interests include family intervention and interparental conflict. Specifically, she is interested in adolescent perceptions of interparental conflict, and how parental relationships and interactions impact adolescent adjustment. Additionally, she is interested in adolescent involvement in the parental dyad, and how this influences perceptions of family functioning. Email: cjs543@psu.edu

Robert Stawski (U of Essex)

Agus Surachman

Agus (pronouns: he/him/his) received his Ph.D in Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) at Penn State. He was a pre-doctoral fellow in the Pathways T32 Training Program (2018-2020). Agus’ research interests are in the intersection between adult development and aging, social determinants of health, and methodology. Find updates related to his works on his website (https://surachman.weebly.com) or follow him on twitter (@agusurachman). Email: agus.surachman@ucsf.edu

Britney Wardecker, Ph.D

Britney (pronouns: she/her/hers) received her Ph.D in Psychology from the University of Michigan in 2016 and subsequently began training as an NIA-funded T32 Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Healthy Aging at Penn State. As an Assistant Professor of Nursing with multidisciplinary training in Psychology, Public Health, and Biobehavioral Health, she pulls from theoretical frameworks in these fields to investigate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) older adults’ psychological and physical health outcomes. Email: bmw5006@psu.edu

Jen Wong (Ohio State)