People

From left to right: Abigail Smith, Dr. Robert Tennyson, Saran Ashley-Douglas, Dr. Jennifer Graham-Engeland, Dr. Dakota Witzel, Dr. Alp Aytuglu

Director

Photo of Jennifer Graham-Engeland
Jennifer E. Graham-Engeland, Ph.D.

She/her
Office Phone: 814-863-1840
Office Fax: 814-863-7525
Email: jeg32@psu.edu
Twitter: @Graham_Engeland
Click for CV

Staff


Abigail Smith

She/her
Email: ajs8854@psu.edu
Abigail is the project lab manager for both The MESH lab and The Stress and Immunity lab. She received a B.A. in Biology from Indiana University.

Postdoctoral Scholar


Alp Aytuglu, Ph.D.

He/him
Email: aka6956@psu.edu
Alp received his Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Science from the University of Georgia in 2023. Alp’s research program is focused on parenting in diverse sociocultural contexts, with particular interests in the transition to fatherhood, neurobiological correlates of fathering, and the development of father-child relationships.
Jee Eun Kang, Ph.D.
She/her
Email: jxk692@psu.edu

Jee eun obtained her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from Pennsylvania State University in the summer of 2023. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Healthy Aging. Her research focuses on the role of social relationships, particularly loneliness and social isolation, in cognitive health among middle-aged and older adults, and how these factors manifest in everyday life.

Julie Kircher, Ph.D.
She/her
Email: jak831@psu.edu

Julie received her Ph.D. in Psychological Science from the University of California, Irvine, in 2024. Her research broadly seeks to understand how underlying biopsychosocial processes contribute to daily and long-term health and well-being during midlife and older adulthood. More specifically, she focuses on the relationship between emotion, inflammatory biomarkers, stress, and cognitive processes.

Graduate Research Assistants

Sarah Rachel Lipitz, B.S. (2nd year, BBH)
She/they
Email: srl5291@psu.edu

Sarah received her B.S. in Neuroscience and Psychology from Brandeis University in 2017. Her research explores how emotion and cognition affect health and wellbeing through psychophysiology, EMA, self-report, and longitudinal measurements. Specific areas of interest include stress and inflammation, emotion regulation, coping and restorative processes, and aging from a whole-lifespan perspective.

Caesar Liu, B.A. (1st year, BBH)

He/him
Email: ckl5780@psu.edu
Personal website
Caesar is a first-year PhD student in Biobehavioral Health and a University Graduate Fellow. Grounded in the developmental psychopathology perspective and theory of constructed emotion, his research seeks to illuminate how early experiences (e.g., adversity, parental socialization) and interoception exert their influences on emotion and emotion-immunity reciprocation across development and situational contexts. He takes a dimensional approach to early adversity and leverages longitudinal and person-centered methodologies to capture (individual variation in) the temporal dynamics of affective experiences and functioning.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Ryan Fenster (3rd year BBH student)

She/ her

Email: rhf5110@psu.edu
Ryan is a third-year student majoring in Biobehavioral Health and Psychology in the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State. She is interested in gratitude as a protective factor and its effects on different mental health and physical health outcomes.