Associate Professor
Department of Genomic Medicine and Infectious Diseases
J. Craig Venter Institute

       

My Links:

• JCVI Profile

Research Summary:

Marcelo Freire, DDS, PhD, DMedSc, is an Associate Professor at J. Craig Venter Institute at the Department of Genomic Medicine and Infectious Diseases. Prior to joining JCVI, Dr. Freire was an Assistant Faculty at The Forsyth Institute and Harvard University (Division of Oral Medicine, Infection and Immunity). Freire’s current research focuses on biological communications between host immune system and oral microbiome. In the context of chronic inflammatory diseases, Freire’s team aim to discover novel molecular switches important to multimodal microbial-inflammatory markers. Freire is currently the President of the Clinical and Translational Science Network at IADR and meld his scientific an clinical knowledge to pursue translational studies at JCVI.

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Professor
University of Maryland School of Social Work

My Bibliography

Research Summary:

My research program focuses on community-based interventions to support early child development in low-income, high-risk populations, especially through enhancing children’s earliest relationships. I am especially interested in integrating attachment theory, research, and attachment-based interventions with broad-based, publicly funded services for families with young children. For example, a major focus of my recent work has been the development and evaluation of an enhanced model of federal Early Head Start services for low-income families with infants and toddlers. The enhancement consists of a brief but intensive attachment-focused intervention, Dozier’s Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC). In this study (N = 208), randomly assigned intervention mothers showed more supportive caregiving based on objective ratings by blinded observers (Berlin et al., 2018). In response to a series of mild stressors, intervention infants showed better regulated cortisol production, particularly rates of cortisol recovery (i.e., down-regulation) (Berlin et al., 2019). This RCT is part of the federal Buffering Toxic Stress research consortium.

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Assistant Professor
College of Global Public Health
New York University

        

Research Interests:

Dr. Cook is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Biostatistics and Social and Behavioral Sciences at New York University’s College of Global Public Health. Dr. Cook is the Principal Investigator and Director of the Attachment and Health Disparities Research Laboratory where her and her research team assess the associations of attachment-related functioning and health disparities among racial/ethnic and sexual minority youth. From this research, Dr. Cook developed an integrated theory of adult attachment and minority stress to better understand the needs of disadvantaged youth transitioning into adulthood, which will in turn inform effective prevention programs for vulnerable racial/ethnic and sexual minority youth. Additionally, Dr. Cook has conducted and published studies examining biological biomarkers of stress among young sexual minority men, and have examined the links between sexual minority stress (i.e., daily experiences of sexual orientation discrimination) and diurnal cortisol, a biomarker of HPA-axis functioning, among young Black and White men. More specifically, Dr. Cook’s work examines interconnections between sexual minority stress, adult attachment, and stress physiology among young adult MSM (YMSM).

Dr. Cook’s Attachment and Health Disparities Lab is currently running several studies that address how individuals perceive social stressors related to being at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities, and how these perceptions may influence various health outcomes, including physiological stress biomarkers. Below are a few of her ongoing studies:

Daily Stressful Experiences and Substance Use Among Young Sexual Minority Men:

This study utilizes daily diary methods to examine how adult attachment, social support, and experiences with daily racial/ethnic- and/or sexual orientation-related discrimination is associated with substance use and diurnal cortisol among young sexual minority men. The goal of this study is to inform culturally relevant substance use prevention programs for young sexual minority men.

Stress and Cardiovascular Health Among Young Sexual Minority Men:

This study is examining the association between attachment, prolonged exposure to stress in the form of minority stressors (i.e., sexual orientation and/or racial/ethnic-related stigma and discrimination), and pre-clinical cardiovascular disease among a cohort of young sexual minority men. Specifically, we seek to examine whether social support buffers the association between negative effects of minority stress and pre-clinical cardiovascular disease.

Stress and Inflammation Among Young Sexual Minority Men:

This study aims to examine the associations between attachment, psychosocial stress, and biological indicators of stress among young sexual minority men. This study measures levels of c-reactive protein (CRP), which has been known to be a biological indicator of prolonged exposure to stress. The goal of this study is to increase our understanding of how daily experiences of stigma and discrimination influence physiological stress responses among sexual minority males.

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Senior Research Scientist
Research Institute on Addictions
Adjunct Faculty, Pediatrics & Psychology
University at Buffalo, State University of New York

Research Interests
Rina Das Eiden, PhD is Senior Research Scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions, and adjunct faculty in Pediatrics and Psychology, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), Division 50 (Society of Addiction Psychology). Dr. Eiden received her doctorate from the University of Maryland. She has been conducting prospective studies with children and families at high risk due to parental substance abuse from the prenatal period to adolescence. The focus of this program of research is to examine potential etiological processes in the development of risk and resilience among children of drug using parents. She has focused on parenting, self-regulation, and stress as primary mediating mechanisms in these studies.

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Assistant Professor
Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine
Center for the Human-Animal Bond

Research Interests
Dr. O’Haire is a Fulbright Scholar who earned her doctorate in Psychology from The University of Queensland. She is a human-animal interaction researcher studying outcomes from service animals, therapy animals, and companion animals. She works with several populations; examples include children with autism spectrum disorder, military veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder, and individuals with physical disabilities. Her research focus is on psychosocial and psychophysiological outcomes.

Website link: http://www.humananimalinteractions.com/

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Assistant Professor
Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Georgia State University

Research Interests
Dr. Chen received her doctorate in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania, and she is interested in biosocial bases of antisocial behavior and related constructs.

Her quantitative works examine how life events and turning points in life (e.g., marriage) shape antisocial behavior, and how broader contexts (e.g., parenting in childhood and adolescence) interacts with individuals’ biological characteristics (e.g., stress system, fear conditioning, pubertal development) to exacerbate or limit antisocial behavior throughout the life-course. She employs both psychophysiological recording and salivary bioscience research methods in furtherance of this work.

Website link: http://aysps.gsu.edu/profile/frances-chen/

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Assistant Professor of Health Psychology
Director of the PNE Lab
University of California, Merced

Research Interests
Jitske Tiemensma received her Ph.D. from Leiden University (The Netherlands) in Medical Science and joined University of California Merced as an Assistant Professor in 2012. She is a psychoneuroendocrinology researcher interested in the biological and psychosocial components of acute and chronic stress in humans. Specifically, she is interested in fluctuations in biomarkers (stress hormones, heart rate, and blood pressure) due to specific stressors and if/how these fluctuations can be influenced. Furthermore, Dr. Tiemensma is interested in how people perceive and cope with stressors. The second line of research in her lab at UC Merced involves people’s perceptions about their illness (i.e. a potential chronic stressor) and their subsequent coping strategies. Work in this line of research is driven by the common sense model of self-regulation. Within this line of research, her main research trajectory focuses on the psychosocial consequences of endocrine disorders such as adrenal insufficiency and hormone-secreting pituitary adenomas.

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Associate Professor, Division of Global Public Health
Director, Disparities Core, Center for AIDS Research
Department of Medicine
University of California, San Diego

Research Interests
Dr. Stockman is an infectious disease epidemiologist that conducts mixed methods research on the intersecting epidemics of gender-based violence against women, HIV acquisition and transmission, and substance abuse among marginalized populations. Dr. Stockman integrates salivary biomarker research into furthering our understanding of these epidemics in the context of alterations in the physiological stress response. She also investigates correlations between the stress response and local and systemic immunological responses as it relates to these epidemics.

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Associate Professor
Department of Human Ecology
Human Development and Family Studies Program
University of California, Davis

Research Interests
Dr. Hibel received her doctorate from Penn State University in Biobehavioral Health and a minor in Human Development and Family Studies. Her research focuses on the implications of stressful family contexts for mother and child health and well-being. A core component of Dr. Hibel’s research agenda involves the integration of biological markers of stress physiology into studies of family relationships. Specifically, she is interested in understanding how stressors (e.g., poverty, violence) affect a mother’s behavior and physiology, and her ability to act as an external regulator of her child’s behavioral and physiological functioning.

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Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Human Evolution and Diversity
University of California, Berkeley

Research Interests
Dr. Fisher received his doctorate from the Pennsylvania State University and joined the Clinical Science faculty at UC Berkeley after a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford. The broad goal of Dr. Fisher’s research is to understand psychopathology as a set of dynamic processes – in which thoughts, feelings, and actions are idiosyncratically organized within each individual. To this end he leverages intensive repeated measures data to better understand within-individual processes that inform psychotherapy and psychopathology. He employs salivary measures in experimental and ecological paradigms to investigate the physiological and endocrinological correlates of depression, anxiety, and trauma.

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