Our Mentors | Mentoring Aspiring Graduate students and building an Inclusive Community (MAGIC)

Use the “Groups” dropdown to sort mentors by their research area, or search for specific mentors under “Name”. UConn and UConn Health Center’s faculty and students can search the research interests of the entire database of faculty members by using Lincus.

	Department	Research Interests
Language and Cognition	Gerry Altmann	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Sentence processing, event cognition, object representation
Food Microbiology	Mary Anne Amalaradjou	Faculty	Animal Science	Probiotics based approaches to control food-borne infections, Host- microbiome interactions in health and disease
Behavioral Neuroscience	Robert Astur	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Hippocampal memory, Virtual Reality testing of complex behaviors, Spatial memory and development, Gender differences, Substance Abuse, PTSD
Clinical Psychology	Ana Luisa Barbosa Torreao Dau	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Parenting, Attachment, Early childhood development, Early exposure to life stress and trauma, Disparities in mental health treatment
Clinical Psychology	Marianne Barton	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Early parent-child relationships, Early Detection of Autism Spectrum Disorders, Developmental trajectories in Autism
Clinical Psychology	Jaime Blackmon	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Anxiety, trauma, psychometric validation, stress
Developmental Psychology	Cynthia Boo	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Pragmatic language abilities of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Personal narrative production, Context effects on language production
Ecological Psychology	Hayes Brenner	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Music cognition, Rhythmic entrainment and its role on neurodevelopment, Neurodevelopmental disorders (ASD, etc.)
Clinical Psychology	Jeff Burke	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	The development of the disruptive behavior disorders, Chronic irritability and outcomes of depression and anxiety, Treatment and service engagement related to disruptive behavior disorders
Educational Psychology	Jackie Caemmerer	Faculty	NEAG	Psychological Assessment Validity Issues, Relations between Social Variables and Academic Achievement and Application of Structural Equation Modeling & Longitudinal Analysis
Behavioral Neuroscience	Renee Chasse	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Neurodevelopment, vocalizations in rodents
Developmental Psychology	Silvia Clement-Lam	Postdoctoral Trainee	Psychological Sciences	Using multimodal behavioral and neuroimaging methods to examine the brain-behavioral basis of literacy development
Kinesiology	Cristina Colón-Semenza	Faculty	Kinesiology	Motivation, behavior change, social support, apathy, effort-based decision-making, health equity, mental health
	Hannah Cooke	Graduate Student	Curriculum & Instruction	Improving equity in undergraduate STEM education and developing justice-centered ambitious science teaching practices.
Clinical Psychology	Jeffrey Crawford	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders, First Episode Psychosis, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Electroencephalography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Diffusion Tensor Imaging, Processing Speed, Attention, Motor Ability, Sensory Integration/Interference, Reward Processing.
Speech, Language, Hearing Sciences	Nicole Cruse	Graduate Student	Speech, Language, & Hearing Sciences	Narrative and storytelling patterns; what those patterns can tell us about how language operates in the brain; and how using those patterns can be used as measurements for speech therapy and improved quality of life for those with neural-based communication disorders, primarily Aphasia and TBI.
Clinical Psychology	Jason Crutcher	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Optimal Outcomes in Autism Spectrum Disorder, Psycholinguistics of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Cognitive neuropsychology of pragmatic language
Developmental Psychology	Kimberly Cuevas	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	The development of basic and higher order cognitive skills from infancy through childhood with a focus on how brain maturation and underlying brain-behavior associations contribute to early cognitive processes. Development of basic and higher-order cognitive processes, developmental cognitive/social neuroscience, EEG, ECG, Neural mirroring systems, Latent learning
Clinical Psychology	Adam David	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Trauma and recovery, Stress-related growth, Self-evaluation, Mindfulness-based interventions, Meaning-making, Habit formation
Developmental Psychology	Kelsey Davinson	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Memory Development, Infant Learning and Memory, Neuroimaging (EEG and MRI)
Speech, Language, Hearing Sciences	Lee Drown	Predoctoral Trainee	Speech, Language, & Hearing Sciences	Speech perception, dyslexia, and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)
Behavioral Neuroscience	Alev Ecevitoglu	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Behaviour, pharmacology, neuroscience, stress, and genetics
Clinical Psychology	Amy Egbert	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	The etiology, correlates, and treatment of disordered eating in youth from underrepresented and marginalized backgrounds. Her work examines how social and environmental influences (e.g., food marketing, access to healthy foods) impact these eating behaviors.
Clinical Psychology	Inge-Marie Eigsti	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	How to map complex behavioral constructs, such as social communication deficits, onto mechanistic processes in the brain; Psycholinguistics in autism spectrum disorders (acquisition of language, conversational gestures, discourse and executive processes, prosody); optimal outcomes in ASD; hyperlexia; savant musical skills; functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
Social Psychology	Renee El-krab	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	HIV Treatment and Prevention
Clinical Psychology	Christiana Field	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Behavioral interventions for weight loss and weight loss maintenance. Social, cognitive, and environmental influences on weight, diet, and physical activity.
Speech, Language, Hearing Sciences	Adrian Garcia-Sierra	Faculty	Speech, Language, & Hearing Sciences	Brain plasticity, language development, event related potentials, speech perception, and bilingualism.
Social Psychology	Alexandra Garr-Schultz	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Identity, Self-definition, Experiences of Marginalization, Underrepresented groups, Multiple Identities, Authenticity Diversity and Inclusion, Equity in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), and Experimental, Qualitative and Longitudinal approaches
Clinical Psychology	Jamilah George	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	PTSD; Racial Trauma; Chronic stress; Health disparities; Obsessive-compulsive and related disorders; Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy; Non-invasive Neuromodulation
Speech, Language, Hearing Sciences	Nikole Giavannone	Graduate Student	Speech, Language, & Hearing Sciences	Speech Perception, Prosody, Functional Plasticity, and Electrophysiology
Clinical Psychology	Amy Gorin	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Treatment strategies to improve long-term weight loss and maintenance, motivational and environmental processes that affect weight control, the impact of modifying the physical and social home environment on weight loss and maintenance, couples-based approaches to weight management and weight loss, and weight gain prevention in young adults.
Industrial/Organizational Psychology	Corey Grantham	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Systemic racism and antiracist resistance, Social hierarchies (power, status, inequality), Team emergent states and processes, Personality and psychometrics
Experimental Psychology	Caitrin Hall	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Social dynamics, interpersonal coordination, and group synchronization.
Educational Psychology	Brittney Hernandez	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Research on Evaluation (RoE) and Assessment Literacy
Clinical Psychology	Gabrielle Hettie	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Chronic pain, biopsychosocial factors, emotion regulation, health psychology
Industrial/Organizational Psychology	James Hughes	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Aging at Work, Hiring Discrimination, Employee Engagement, Virtual Workplaces
Language and Cognition	Gitte Joergensen	Postdoc	Psychological Sciences	Eye tracking and how to integrate eye movements with other measures such as fMRI and EEG
Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies	Sara Johnson	Faculty	Literatures, Cultures, and Languages	Hellenistic Judaism, Ancient Fictions
Behavioral Neuroscience	Steve Kinsey	Faculty	School of Nursing	Anxiety/Depression, Cannabinoid/opioid pharmacology, Chronic pain, Stress and Substance use disorders
	George Kuchel	Faculty	UConn Health	Multidisciplinary approaches to the study of aging emphasizing inter-individual variability and resilience mechanisms pertaining to mobility, voiding, cognition and host defense; Design and validation of geroscience-guided interventions into aging and common chronic diseases of aging; Personalized and mechanism-guided approaches to the diagnosis and management of common geriatric syndromes- "Precision Geroscience"
Developmental Psychology	Nicole Landi	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Reading, Reading and Language Disorders, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuroimaging Genetics
Developmental Psychology	Caroline Larson	Postdoctoral Fellow	Psychological Sciences	Relationships between language and other cognitive factors in children with language disorders, including Developmental Language Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder, with the long-term goal of improving differential diagnosis and treatment.
	Oliver Lasnick	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Functional connectivity in reading and neurodevelopmental disorders, Temporal sampling and neural oscillations in language, Computational modeling
Language and Cognition	Nathan Lautz	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Cognitive neuroscience of concepts, grounded cognition, semantic control, context effects in semantic memory
Language and Cognition	Brittany Lee	Postdoctoral Trainee	Psychological Sciences	Psycholinguistics of reading and use of EEG and ERPs to investigate predictors of response to reading intervention in children with dyslexia. Language processing in deaf individuals, including phonological processing in American Sign Language (ASL), language co-activation in ASL-English bilinguals, and word processing in deaf readers.
Clinical Psychology	Jerin Lee	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Psychological and social processes that motivate changes in social cognition and health. Relations between sexual assault victimization, pain, PTSD, depression, anxiety; links between mindfulness and psychological/physical health.
Clinical Psychology	Sharon Lee	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Biobehavioral mechanisms linking trauma and PTSD with adverse physical health outcomes, with a focus on cardiovascular disease.
Developmental Psychology	Kaya LeGrand	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Language in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) across the lifespan, language learning, and communication abilities of minimally verbal and nonverbal individuals with ASD.
Language and Cognition	Wesley Leong	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Event cognition and Conceptual Processing in Language
Educational Psychology	Michael Li	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences
Language and Cognition	Jessica Loya	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Language acquisition in children, Heritage speakers
Developmental Psychology\|Educational Psychology	Jie Luo	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Neural mechanisms of reading development and the neural signatures of successful reading instruction/learning intervention outcome.
Language and Cognition	Jim Magnuson	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Neurobiology and psychology of language, including processing, development, and disorders of spoken and written language; computational models as theory-building tools; developing comprehensive understanding of language and learning over the lifespan from cognitive, neural, and genetic perspectives through interdisciplinary collaborations; science communication.
Developmental Psychology	Kelly Mahaffy	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Reading comprehension, development of language and reading, and brain structure and function underlying language abilities.
Behavioral Neuroscience	Etan Markus	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Brain basis of behavior, focusing on rats. Specifically: Memory formation; Aging; Hippocampal system; Navigation; Social Interactions
Social Psychology	Kerry Marsh	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Immersive virtual reality methods; Ecological and dynamical approaches to environmental psychology; Motivational influences on persuasion, social cognition, and behavior; Implicit attitudes and HIV risk behavior; Social affordances and interpersonal coordination of movement
Social Psychology	Lisset Martinez-Berman	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Anti-vaccination attitudes and celebrity admiration, and health attitudes,
Behavioral Neuroscience	Ruth McCleod	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Hypoxic-Ischemic Brain Injury and Behavioral Outcomes
Educational Psychology	Betsy McCoach	Faculty	Educational Psychology	Latent Variable Modeling, Instrument Design, Multilevel Modeling, Longitudinal Analysis, Quantitative Research Methodology, Gifted Education, and Underachievement
Clinical Psychology	Katherine McManus-Shipp	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Eating disorders, weight management, physical activity, and obesity; Body image, weight stigma, and excessive exercise; Health psychology; Primary and secondary prevention & intervention
Perception, Action, and Cognition	Hannah Mechtenberg	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	How analogical reasoning and language processing intersect to facilitate learning abstract concepts and in creative problem solving. Identifying the underlying functional connections within the brain that support analogical thinking throughout development.
Developmental Psychology	Jonas Miller	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Empathy and prosocial development, Adversity, Resilience, Developmental psychopathology, Developmental social neuroscience, Environmental health
Speech, Language, Hearing Sciences	Jennifer Mozeiko	Faculty	Speech, Language, & Hearing Sciences	Aphasia rehabilitation, discourse deficits following brain injury, mechanisms for recovery in chronic aphasia, functional neuroimaging.
Language and Cognition\|Speech, Language, Hearing Sciences	Emily Myers	Faculty	Speech, Language, & Hearing Sciences	Cognitive neuroscience of speech and language, aphasia, speech perception.
Language and Cognition	Letty Naigles	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Language acquisition across languages and etiologies
Perception, Action, and Cognition	Alexandra Paxton	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Communication and social interaction as a complex dynamical system (including movement, language, attention, and emotion), Data-rich and dynamics-focused research methods and analyses, Naturally occurring datasets and “big data” for psychological theory-building, Ethics of human-derived data
Educational Psychology	Joselyn Perez	Graduate Student	Educational Psychology	Achievement gaps regarding English Language Learners and self-efficacy of bilingualism
Social Psychology	Kenneth Perez	Faculty	Psychological Sciences
Industrial/Organizational Psychology	Christian Piscopo	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Transformative Leadership and Team interaction
Social Psychology	Felicia Pratto	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Intergroup Relations, Dynamics of Power, Social Cognition
Clinical Psychology	Destiny Printz	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Trauma, chronic stress, and PTSD; Coping and resilience in marginalized communities; Dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system and chronic health conditions; Translational research.
Developmental Psychology	Madeline Quam	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Language acquisition and emergence, homesign, sign languages, number cognition
Social Psychology	Nairan Ramirez-Esparza	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	How culture and language influences personality, behavior, and health.
Behavioral Neuroscience	Carl Rodriguez	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Analgesic effects and potential side effects of phytochemicals found in the Cannabis plant; Behavioral Neuroscience; Pharmacology; Pain and Cannabis
Clinical Psychology	Ari Romano-Verthelyi	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Examining factors that affect Latinx families’ access to and engagement with mental health services, with particular focus on the referral process.
Perception, Action, and Cognition	David Saltzman	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Neural bases of speech perception, distributional learning of speech sound categories, adaptation to talker specific speech input
Pharmaceutical Sciences	Koyel Sen	Graduate Student	Pharmaceutical Sciences	Numerical modeling of particle dynamics and 3D printed tablet dosage form
Social Psychology	Natalie Shook	Faculty	School of Nursing	Social Psychology, Mindfulness, Behavior and well-being, Aging and Health Disparities, Pain
Educational Psychology	Kristin Simmers	Graduate Student	Educational Psychology	How and to what extent knowledge from the interdisciplinary field of Mind, Brain and Education science (MBE) impacts novice or pre-service teachers’ beliefs, attitudes and actions.
Clinical Psychology	Sinead Sinnot	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Stress and health-related outcomes, Post-traumatic stress and resilience, Meditation and mindfulness, Cognitive neuropsychology related to memory and attention
Speech, Language, Hearing Sciences	Erika Skoe	Faculty	Speech, Language, & Hearing Sciences	Plasticity of the auditory system, auditory evoked potentials, and auditory neurophysiology.
Developmental Psychology	Rhiannon Smith	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Friendships and social-emotional adjustment in childhood and adolescence
Language and Cognition	William Snyder	Faculty	Linguistics	Language Acquisition, Comparative Syntax, Syntax-Semantics Interface
Experimental Syntax	Jon Sprouse	Faculty	Linguistics	Experimental Syntax
Clinical Psychology	Mackenzie Stabile	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Neuropsychology, Developmental & Acquired Language Disorders, and Executive Function
Computational Neuroscience	Ian Stevenson	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Computational Neuroscience, Statistical Analysis of Neural Data, Adaptation and Plasticity
Developmental Psychology	Umay Suanda	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Early communication and language development, the input and the learning environment, the dynamics of early social interactions, statistical learning, mechanisms of word learning.
Clinical Psychology	Elise Taverna	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Neuropsychology; Cognitive, language and social outcomes in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders
Language and Cognition\|Speech, Language, Hearing Sciences	Rachel Theodore	Faculty	Speech, Language, & Hearing Sciences	Perceptual learning, phonetic variability, cognitive neuroscience, language acquisition.
Ecological Psychology	Gray Thomas	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Interpersonal synchrony during conflict; Habit formation; Dynamics of misinformation; Leadership, motivation, and team dynamics.
Clinical Psychology	Hannah Thomas	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Optimal Outcomes in Autism Spectrum Disorder, Cognitive Neuroscience of Communication, Neuropsychology
Clinical Psychology	Rebecca Thomas	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Early identification and assessment of autism spectrum disorders, ASD screening methods in primary care settings
Ecological Psychology	Susan Tilbury	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Music Intervention, Rhythmic entrainment, Computational neuroscience, Consciousness, Collective effervescence and ecstatic ritual, Self-other merging, Biorhythmic aspects of anxiety and trauma disorders, Mindfulness and contemplative practices
Educational Psychology	Alexandria Tomkunas	Graduate Student	Human Development & Family Sciences	Children’s social, emotional, and behavioral well-being, Education equity, School and community interventions, Child resilience
	Kiranmayi Vedantham	Graduate Student	UConn Health
Language and Cognition	Portia Washington	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Auditory and written language comprehension post-TBI, culturally informed approaches to research, aphasia.
	Anietie Williams	Graduate Student	Chemistry
Language and Cognition	Emma Wing	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	Event cognition, Sentence processing, Morphosyntax
Speech, Language, Hearing Sciences	Torri Ann Woodruff	Graduate Student	Speech, Language, & Hearing Sciences	The management of hearing loss with a focus on family centered interventions.
Clinical Psychology	Christine Yantz	Faculty	Psychological Sciences
Developmental Psychology	Emily Yearling	Graduate Student	Psychological Sciences	The interaction between perception and action in the developing brain, Development of categorical and conceptual knowledge, Cognitive development in early childhood.
Language and Cognition	Eiling Yee	Faculty	Psychological Sciences	Semantic memory and the neural representation of concepts. Spoken word recognition and language processing. The neural basis of language.
Educational Psychology	Elizabeth Zagata	Graduate Student	Educational Psychology	The intersection of literacy and assessment with policy and special education law.