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 Stress and Health lab and The Stress and Immunity lab. She received a B.A. in Biology from Indiana University.

Postdoctoral Scholar


Dakota Witzel, Ph.D.

Email: ddw5372@psu.edu
Dakota received her PhD. in Human Development and Family Studies in 2022 and is currently a T32 pathways postdoctoral fellow for Penn State’s Center for Healthy Aging. Her research focuses on leveraging daily stress processes such as affective or biological reactivity in social relationships to inform both daily and long-term health and well-being in midlife and old age.

 


Robert Tennyson, Ph.D.

Email: rzt5106@psu.edu
Rob received his PhD in Biological Anthropology from the University of Washington in 2022. His research investigates how psychosocial stress influences biological aging and why this differs between individuals and populations.


Alp Aytuglu

Email: aka6956@psu.edu
He/him
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.

Graduate Research Assistants


Karina Van Bogart (4th year, BBH)                                                                                                      

She/her
Email: ksv22@psu.edu
Click for Google Scholar
I am broadly interested in how psychological stress and mood affect health and well-being. More specifically, I aim to investigate how loneliness and social connectedness influence psychological and physiological mechanisms underlying physical health. 

 


Sarah Rachel Lipitz, B.S. (2nd year, BBH)

She/her
Email: srl5291@psu.edu
My research explores how the relationship between emotion and cognition impact everyday facets of health across social, environmental, psychological, and physiological domains. Specific areas of interest include self-referential cognition and autobiographical memory, emotion regulation in depressive symptomatology, stress and inflammation, and aging from a whole-lifespan perspective.

 

Undergraduate Research Assistants


Saran Ashley-Douglas (Biobehavioral Health major, 2024)

She/Her
She is a third-year student majoring in Biobehavioral Health. Her goal is to pursue a career in the medical field after completing undergrad. Her main interest is how early life stressors can impact immunological functioning later in adulthood.

Madison Duley (Biobehavioral Health major)
She/Her
Madison is a third-year student majoring in Biobehavioral Health. Following her undergraduate training, she plans to attend nursing school. Her ultimate goal is to earn a master’s degree in nursing and to apply her training in health and research to a position in pediatrics.
Madison Seidel (Biology major)

She/her
Email: mps6871@psu.edu
Madison is a second-year honors student majoring in Biology. She is most interested in how biobehavioral processes related to psychological stress relate to physiological health and performance. She plans to attend medical school after completing her undergraduate training.