For information on students who entered in: 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 5th Year and beyond
STUDENTS WHO ENTERED IN 2007
Katia Canenguez was born in El Salvador and brought up in Cambridge. She earned a B.A. in Psychology and Theology with a minor in Faith, Peace, and Justice from Boston College and an Ed.M in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University. While in college, she interned as a Milieu Counselor at Children’s Hospital in their locked psychiatric unit. After completing her bachelor’s degree, Katia worked at the New England Home for Little Wanderers and as a Spanish Medical Interpreter at Massachusetts General Hospital. While obtaining her master’s degree, she began to work at MGH as a research coordinator for a hunger intervention study for low-income communities of diverse cultural backgrounds. The results of this work have been published and presented at several conferences. For the past two years, Katia has worked with The Bolivian Street Children Project, a program that promotes social development in former street children who have endured trauma. Last year she also became involved in a longitudinal study being conducted in Chile (Abilities for Life Program) where the Psychiatric Symptom Checklist is being used as part of a program that focuses on risk assessment, intervention, and the promotion of resilience in low-income families. More recently, she has worked at Shriners Hospital for Burn Children testing and validating an evidenced-based intervention for pediatric burn trauma stress in 0-5 year old children and their parents. Through her experiences with diverse communities she has learned that there are evident cultural influences that can promote or hinder resilience and hopes to focus on interventions that translate not only linguistically, but also culturally. Katia’s primary research interests include trauma and PTSD, resilience, and spirituality as a coping resource for children and families who have lived through adversity. Katia will be working with Dr. John Perez.
Hercilia Corona-Ordonez received her B.A. in Psychology with a concentration in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of New Haven. While at the University of New Haven, she worked as a research assistant on general memory and cognitive ability studies. She also worked as a part-time employee in the library assisting graduate students with the various library data systems useful in conducting literature searches for their dissertations. She is currently working as a pilot project director in the Psychosocial Substance Abuse Research Center at the Yale University School of Medicine. She is conducting baseline screenings and follow-up assessments and assisting in the preparation of posters, abstracts, and articles for publication. She is also responsible for IRB submissions and the quality assurance of data collected for several studies. She recruits and screens study participants, obtains informed consent, and assists with data analysis and the tabulation of findings. She has also worked as a human resources specialist conducting hiring interviews and ensuring that they followed a standardized protocol. Hercilia is bi-lingual in English and Spanish. She will be working with Dr. Ester Shapiro.
Catherine Draper received her BA with High Honors from Princeton University in 2005. She majored in psychology and wrote her senior thesis on relations between speech ability and behavior in autism. After graduation, she was awarded an intramural research grant to work at NIMH. First, in the lab of Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, she studied schizophrenia using neuroimaging techniques (MEG, fMRI). Then, in the lab of Susan Swedo, she worked on a project that aimed at identifying subtypes of autism. Catherine also spent a summer working as a direct care staff member at an assisted living/residential home for women with autism and spent a semester studying at the University of Queensland in Australia where she did volunteer work at a nursing home on the dementia ward. She is currently tutoring 8th through 12th grade students in math through the StudySmart program. Katherine will be working with Drs. Zsuzsa Kaldy and Alice Carter.
Melody Blass Fisher earned a BA in Psychology and English and American Literature from Brandeis University in 2002. While at Brandeis she acquired broad teaching, training, and public speaking experience as president of the Committee on Rape Education and served as the layout editor for Watch magazine. Subsequently, she moved to New York City and spent two years working as a domestic violence case manager for Safe Horizon and one year as a counselor to families of homicide victims and victims of domestic violence at My Sisters’ Place. She has also spent the last four years providing crisis counseling and advocacy for survivors of rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence as part of the Mount Sinai Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Program. Melody currently works as a Research and Education Associate for the Center for Social and Emotional Education where she has worked to develop and administer a comprehensive survey to measure perceptions of school climate held by students, parents, and school personnel. She has a co-authored publication based on this measure and another article in process. Melody and her husband Matthew are both looking forward to returning to the Boston area, where they first met. Melody will be working with Dr. Michael Milburn.
Danielle Forbes graduated magna cum laude with honors in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts Boston where she was awarded the Mallinckrodt General Clinical Research Center Fellowship to complete her honors project under the mentorship of Dr. Jane Adams. Her project focused on the teratogenic effects of anticonvulsants on early childhood behavior. While an undergraduate, Danielle worked in Dr. Alice Carter’s childhood emotional and social health laboratory as well as in Dr. Jane Adams’ teratology laboratory. Since graduating, she has worked as a project coordinator for Dr. Carter. In that capacity she is responsible for the day-to-day operations of two NIMH funded research projects on early childhood psychopathology and competence. Danielle has also found time to do volunteer work in her community, organizing diversity recruitment drives for a local public school as well as anti-bullying campaigns. Her research interests are in early childhood emotional functioning, child assessment and diagnosis, childhood trauma and resilience. She will be working with Dr. Ed Tronick
Nicholas (Nick) MianClinical Interests: Families of children with socio-emotional
problems. I am interested in working with young children and their
parents to develop treatment plans that empower parents and teach
children adaptive coping skills. I am particularly interested in
working with under-served and at-risk populations.
Research Interests: Risk and prevention of childhood internalizing
disorders. I am interested in identifying early risk factors for
childhood anxiety and depression, and learning how this research can
be applied in the development of intervention and prevention programs.
Master's topic: Risk factors for childhood anxiety and depression. I
am using a longitudinal model to identify family and environmental
risk factors for pre-school children that may be predictive of
problems in socio-emotional functioning later, in second grade.Mentor: Dr. Alice Carter.
Clinical Interests: Child Psychopathology
Research Interests: Immigrant Children and Families
Master's topic: Empirically Based Treatments for Immigrant Children
Mentor: Dr. Ester Shapiro.
Liza ZwiebachClinical Interests: cognitive-behavioral treatment of mood disorders
Research Interests: risk and resilience; the adolescent to adulthood transition; positive youth development
Master's topic: The Effects of Resource Loss on Mental Health Among Survivors of Hurricane Katrina
Presentation:
Zwiebach, L., Lowe, S., Rhodes, J., & Chan, C. (2008, May). Loss of pet significantly affects mental health of Hurricane Katrina survivors. Poster to be presented at the Association for Psychological Science 20th Annual Convention, Chicago, IL.
Mentor: Dr. Jean Rhodes