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Marialuisa Cummins
Clinical Research Assistant II
Marialuisa received her BS in Psychology and Health with a concentration in Public Health; additionally, she minored in Sociology with a concentration in Health and Medicine as well as in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Houston. She currently works as a bilingual Research Assistant for the ECHO Study. Her research interests include working with the Latinx population, including how cultural stigmas such as familism, stress, and their surroundings come to affect a child's development and outlook on mental and behavioral disorders. In the future, Marialuisa aspires to earn a PhD in Clinical Psychology to contribute to a growing knowledge of how cultural backgrounds affect a child's development into adulthood while also taking a clinical approach to hopefully help break down the stigmas surrounding mental health disorders within the Latinx community.
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Daniella Ferranti
Clinical Research Assistant II
Daniella received her BS in Psychology with a concentration in Applied Clinical Science from Quinnipiac University. Additionally, she received an MA in Psychology from Boston University and currently works as a Research Assistant for the ECHO Study. Daniella previously worked in child neurodevelopment research at Rhode Island Hospital. Her current research interests focus on understanding how various early childhood experiences, particularly parent-child relationships and interactions, impact child development and mental health. Ultimately, Daniella hopes to earn her PhD in Clinical Psychology to help contribute to the growing knowledge surrounding parenting styles, attachment, and the effect parenting and early life experiences have on child development.
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Kaitlin Mulligan
Clinical Research Assistant II
Kaitlin received her BA in Psychology, with minors in the Sociology of Health & Medicine and Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences, from the University of Michigan in 2022. As an undergraduate, she worked as a Research Assistant on projects looking at race bias in ADHD and bias in the perception of children’s creative defiant-type behavior. She has clinical experience working with children through a program designed to target and improve executive functioning for children with learning differences using online games. Kaitlin is very excited to be a part of the Emotion Project extension within the BRL. She is very interested in neurodevelopmental disorders, specifically ADHD and other learning differences, and the development of psychopathology during childhood and adolescence. In the future, Kaitlin hopes to pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology to work with children, conducting neuropsychological evaluations.
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Asja Abron
Clinical Research Assistant II
Asja received her BS in Psychology and B.A. in Education for Human Development & Family Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2023. In her undergraduate career, Asja worked as a Research Assistant on projects focused on social and neural correlates of risk-taking among adolescents, the parenting practices of Black fathers, and non-suicidal self-injury among menstruating teenagers. Outside of research, Asja has experience working with adolescents through her work with students at an education non-profit that prepares first-generation and low-income students for college and careers. Asja joined the Emotion Project in the BRL in 2023. She hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology to further study the development of psychopathology in youth, particularly in marginalized communities.
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Pauline Vartany
Clinical Research Assistant I
Pauline received her BA in Psychology, with minors in Cognitive Science and Musicology, from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2024. As an undergraduate, Pauline worked as a Research Assistant on projects focused on social communication behaviors in children and adults with ASD, cognitive and physical health outcomes of race-based stress among college students, and the relationship between parent-child interactions and emotion. She completed her honors thesis on the executive functioning outcomes among children with comorbid ADHD and anxiety. Pauline is very excited to be joining the Emotion Project in the BRL, and she hopes to pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology to continue studying cognitive development and psychopathology in children.
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