The IISBR’s scientific network of salivary bioscience researchers continues to build momentum through increasing multidisciplinary research expertise. Recently, Rina Das Eiden, PhD., an expert on prenatal and postnatal consequences of alcohol, cocaine and cigarette use by parents, and Maggie O’Haire, PhD., an expert on the unique and pervasive effects of interactions with animals, joined the IISBR as Faculty Affiliates.
The Faculty Affiliates at the IISBR represent a highly specialized network of investigators with common interests linked by salivary bioscience. Together, they create opportunities for researchers (new and senior) to collaborate and build research teams. These collaborations provide field-specific expertise and a solid foundation of credible scientific application from the prior experiences of other researchers already active in the field of salivary bioscience. “Team science has the potential to advance our understanding more efficiently and effectively than if investigators work individually,” says Douglas A. Granger, Ph.D., Chancellor’s Professor of Psychology and Director of the IISBR.
Dr. Eiden 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). Her current focus is examining potential etiological processes in the development of risk and resilience among children of parents with various levels of prenatal and postnatal parental substance abuse. She has focused on parenting, self-regulation, and stress as primary mediating mechanisms in these studies.
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. Her research focuses on psychosocial and psychophysiological outcomes.
“Dr. O’Haire and Dr. Eiden have pioneered the integration of salivary bioscience into two very distinct fields and I am delighted they have accepted the invitation to join IISBR as faculty affiliates. I look forward to their participation in advancing salivary bioscience in the decades to come,” says Granger.