Current Fellows of the Training Program
Since its inception in 1987, 110 fellows have completed one or more years of post-doctoral training in our program.
Caitlin Abar received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies with a focus on Substance Use Prevention and Research Methodology from The Pennsylvania State University in 2010. Her primary research interests lie in the developmental periods of adolescence and the transition to adulthood and, broadly, comprise the etiology and prevention of health risk behaviors, including alcohol and other substance use. More specifically, her interests focus on the application of latent variable modeling to the examination of the relationship between parenting and young adult substance use. During her postdoctoral position, Caitlin intends to explore the measurement characteristics of influential parenting behaviors, as well as the relationship between longitudinal trends in parenting and the developmental course of substance use across subgroups of adolescents and young adults using growth curve analysis. The ultimate purpose of this work is to inform ongoing and future family based substance use prevention programs.
Jordan Braciszewski received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, with specializations in Community Psychology and Quantitative Methods, from Wayne State University (Detroit, MI) in 2010. His research broadly focuses on underserved populations, program evaluation, and social policy change. He is particularly interested in the prevention of substance use and chronic homelessness, using both community-based efforts and clinically-informed interventions. He studies factors at several ecological levels of analysis that contribute to positive individual mental health, substance use, and psychological well-being outcomes. Given his background in criminal justice, Jordan is also interested in the crossover of the corrections and addiction/mental health fields. Clinically- and economically-efficacious alternatives to adjudication that also prevent future negative outcomes (e.g., continued substance use, homelessness, and recidivism) are included in Jordan's research agenda. These efforts all fall within his passion for and dedication to increasing access to effective services for underprivileged populations.
Patricia Cioe received her Ph.D. in Nursing from University of Massachusetts, Worcester in 2012. Researching tobacco dependence and its relationship to cardiovascular risk in HIV-infected adults.
Jacques Gaume received his Ph.D. in Life Sciences from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland in 2011. He is currently working on research in which he will analyze data from a study specifically designed to measure the influence of counselor characteristics and behaviors during brief motivational interventions on alcohol use outcomes in young men.
Matthew Maccani received his Ph.D. in Medical Sciences from Brown University in 2011. He is currently researching exposure and fetal growth associated miRNA alterations in the human placenta.
Anne Maloney Day received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Binghamton University (SUNY)in 2012. Researching the mechanisms by which individuals relapse to substance use, with a particular interest in the role that elements of executive functioning (e.g., self-control, response inhibition, working memory) may play in treatment and relapse prevention.
Jennifer Merrill received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from University at Buffalo in 2012. Researching cognitive and psychosocial factors that contribute to the etiology and maintenance of problematic alcohol use, with particular interest in the way individuals subjectively evaluate the consequences of their drinking as a mechanism of change.
Kimberly O'Brien received her Ph.D. in Social Work from Boston College in 2011. She is currently researching psychopathological risk factors for adolescent suicide, treatment of adolescents with comorbid suicidality and substance abuse disorders, and adolescent suicide prevention.
Abigail Polter received her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the University of Alabama in 2011. Conducting research on synaptic mechanisms of stress-induced relapse to alcohol and drug seeking.
Allecia Reid received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Arizona State University in 2012. Researching individual differences and intervention features that may moderate the effectiveness of norms-based alcohol risk reduction interventions, as well as the mediational mechanisms through which such interventions influence behavior.
Megan Roberts received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the Dartmouth College in 2012. Researching the prevention of substance use, including the implications for race-based health disparities.
Daniel Rounsaville received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Maryland in 2010. He is currently conducting research in mechanisms of lapse and relapse in recovery with substance dependent and dually diagnosed individuals, and telehealth interventions to prevent relapse.
Christopher Salas-Wright received his Ph.D. in Social Work from Boston College in 2012. Researching the etiology and prevention of substance abuse and related risk behaviors among Latino adolescents in the United States and in Latin America.
Meenakshi Subbaraman received her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from University of California, Berkeley in 2012. Researching causal mechanisms of behavioral and pharmaceutical treatments for alcoholism, causal inference approaches, and methods for direct/indirect effect estimation.
Golfo Tzilos received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Wayne State University in 2010. Her primary research and clinical interests are in the area of substance abuse treatment, with a focus in brief motivational interventions. Her previous work has examined the feasibility and efficacy of a brief, computer-based motivational intervention for alcohol use during pregnancy. Currently, she is interested in adapting and implementing a computer-delivered approach to identify and treat women that are at risk for both alcohol use and intimate partner violence during pregnancy.