People
Team Leads
Jocelyn Meza, PhD
Lab Principal Investigator/Director
Dr. Meza is an Assistant Professor In-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and a bilingual licensed clinical psychologist at UCLA. Currently, she is the Associate Director of the Youth Stress and Mood (YSAM) Program and the Principal Investigator of the Health Equity & Access Research & Treatment (HEART) lab at UCLA. Her research interests include studying socio-ecological risk and protective factors for suicide and self-harming behaviors among Black and Latinx youth. She aims to integrate psychological, cognitive, and sociocultural influences to predict suicide and self-harm behaviors and, importantly, to identify therapeutic targets for culturally responsive interventions for ethnoracially minoritized youth. In addition, Dr. Meza is expanding her research to adapt evidence-based psychosocial interventions for ethnoracailly diverse youth, particularly Black and Latinx youth and systems involved youth (i.e., dually involved youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems).
Dr. Meza is a certified bilingual psychologist trained at UC Berkeley and UCSF in cognitive-behavior and dialectical behavior therapies. Dr. Meza’s work in advancing mental health treatments among ethnoracially minoritized families has been recognized by the National Latinx Psychology Association and has also received the prestigious UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Dr. Meza’s UCLA Research Profile: https://profiles.ucla.edu/jocelyn.meza
Juliane Martinez, BA
Staff Research Associate I (SRA I) - Lab Manager
Juliane Martinez is a Staff Research Associate at the HEART Lab. In May 2022, she graduated with a BS in Psychology from California State University, Channel Islands. During her undergraduate studies, she worked alongside her mentor and professor, Dr. Christy Teranishi-Martinez, as a research assistant conducting research studies on flow, happiness and well-being, as well on sexual assault and sexual harassment. After four years of undergrad research experience, she decided that her passion was to continue conducting research studies to be able to answer the questions that she and many others may have on certain psychology topics. Furthermore, Juliane hopes to continue to further dive into research to be able to inspire others and encourage them to learn and explore more about the field. She hopes to get her PhD in the near future to be able to teach and become a mentor to others interested in the field of research and psychology.
Maryam Abdallah
Senior Research Associate
Maryam Abdallah is a Senior Research Associate at the HEART lab at UCLA. Maryam received her BA in Psychology from UCLA in 2019. As an undergraduate, she worked as a medical scribe at the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and became the Chief Medical Scribe upon graduating. In this role, she worked in outpatient, inpatient and partial hospital psychiatry programs and developed an expertise in psychiatric electronic medical record (EMR) data. She led the design and piloting of a large study investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders. Maryam also worked as a Clinical Data Research Analyst for the UCLA research informatics program, where she expanded upon her expertise in EMR data. Maryam has extensive experience designing quantitative and qualitative mental health questionnaires in both Qualtrics and REDCap. As a first-generation immigrant, Maryam’s research interests center around psychological disorders and suicidality in youth from immigrant and minority backgrounds. She is especially interested in leveraging natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to analyze free-text mental health data.
Virginia Otis
Program coordinator
Virginia is the research coordinator at the HEART Lab. She graduated in January 2023 with a B.A. in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis on complex trauma. Pursuing research resonated with Virginia’s desire to continue learning, answer and explore hard questions, and carve a path in the field unique to her clinical experience and research interests. Virginia currently splits her time between the HEART Lab and the Youth Stress and Mood Program, where she serves as a Study Coordinator. Virginia’s research interests are centered around adolescent self-injurious thoughts and behaviors, and specifically behavior interruption/redirection as both prevention and intervention. At the HEART lab, she is primarily focused on the Youth Mental Health Academy and the Inpatient Study. Virginia intends to pursue a graduate degree in psychology in the future, but is enjoying her current projects!
Wendy perez
Lab Research Assistant
Wendy Perez is a research assistant in the HEART Lab at UCLA. She graduated from UCLA in June 2023 with a major in Human Biology and Society with Highest Departmental Honors. She is also currently working as a Medical Assistant and Scribe. She is very passionate about working with underserved communities and improving the health services they receive. Within the upcoming years, she plans on applying to medical school and continuing research. Wendy is currently assisting on two research studies, both of which seek to improve mental health services for Latine/x youth.
Postdocs/Fellows
Natalia Jaramillo, PhD
Natalia Jaramillo, PhD is a current Postdoc in the HEART lab. Dr. Jaramillo obtained her Ph.D. in Clinical, Counseling, & School Psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara and completed her pre-doctoral internship at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Her research interests include understanding patterns of risk and resilience in the context of experiences of trauma and adolescent and young adult suicide prevention. Clinically, Natalia has worked in various settings with children, adolescents, and families.
Natalia will be assisting with the PCORI study that focuses on Spanish suicide prevention in Emergency Department settings with adolescents, young adults, and Latinx families. In addition, Natalia will also contribute to the Alacrity study which focuses on community college suicide prevention.
- Felix, E. D., Meskunas, H. M., Jaramillo, N., & Quirk, M. (2020). Measuring media exposure to acute mass violence. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(4), 397–404. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0000514
- Jaramillo, N. & Felix, E.D. (2020). Psychosocial influences on posttraumatic growth among university students following a mass murder. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 91, 27-35.
- Jaramillo, N., & Felix, E. D. (2023). Understanding the psychosocial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Latinx emerging adults. Frontiers in psychology, 14, 1066513. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1066513
- Jaramillo, N., Suarez Bonilla, B., Piña-Watson, B., Garcia, A., Sanchez, M., Meza, J.I. (under review). The role of racial bias and pathways to self-harm outcomes for Mexican-descent college students during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lilian Bravo, PhD
Lilian G. Bravo received her BS and PhD in nursing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). She aspires to increase access and optimize the delivery of mental health care for ethnoracially minoritized youth through culturally- and contextually-congruent interventions. She has previously been funded by a T32 Pre‐Doctoral Trainee Award, NR007091‐22: Interventions for Preventing & Managing Chronic Illness at UNC-CH, the Hillman Scholars Program in Nursing Innovation, and the NIMH-funded Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Training Program at the University of Miami. Her current research interests are to (1) improve suicide risk detection and (2) identify mental health service engagement strategies for minoritized adolescents. In her spare time, she likes keeping up with new music releases and spending time with her dog, Miguel.
Daisy Lopez
Daisy Lopez is a Chicana first-generation college graduate as well as a PhD candidate in the Clinical Psychology program at the University of Miami. She is currently on her clinical internship year at UCLA’s Psychiatry Department. She graduated from Princeton University in 2017 with a B.A. in psychology. She then worked as a research assistant at the University of Southern California with Dr. Steven Lopez. In LA, she worked on La CLAve, a community project aimed at informing and motivating the Latinx community to seek early treatment for serious mental illness with the overall aim of reducing the duration of untreated psychosis. These experiences influenced her research interests which center around the role of culture on the illness trajectory of psychotic spectrum disorders, cultural adaptations for empirically based treatments, suicidality, and serving various marginalized and underrepresented communities such as sexual minorities, people of color, and those with serious mental illness. Daisy aims to help these communities through an academic career that includes community-based work, collaboration with individuals with lived experience, dissemination and advocacy efforts, policy change, and mentorship.
- Lopez, D., Saenz Escalante, G., & Weisman de Mamani, A. (2023). The role of religious coping on suicidality
among Latinx and Black/African American individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Spirituality in Clinical Practice. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/scp0000317 - Lopez, D., & De Mamani, A. W. (2022). The interplay of family cohesion, self-stigma, and suicidal ideation in people of color with psychotic spectrum disorders. Psychiatry Research-neuroimaging, 313, 114639. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2022.114639
- Lopez, D., & Weisman de Mamani, A. (2020). Family-related risk and protective factors for suicidal ideation in individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 51(6), 537–544. https://doi.org/10.1037/pro0000307
- Lopez, D., Altamirano, O., & De Mamani, A. W. (2020). The association between perceived racial discrimination and subclinical symptoms of psychosis. Journal of Mental Health, 31(1), 14 –21. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2020.1793120
Sara Schiff
Sara Schiff is a third-year graduate student in the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program at UCLA under the mentorship of Dr. Steve Lee. She received her B.S. in Psychology from Tufts University in 2018 where she worked with Dr. Paul Muentener to research how young children understand the causes and effects of emotion. After graduating, she worked as a project assistant at the University of Southern California’s Health, Emotion, and Addiction lab examining the intersection of health behavior, mental health, policy implementation, and tobacco use. Sara’s current research interests include understanding the etiology of conduct problems, particularly among girls, and how it relates to various contextual factors (i.e., peers, family, community). In addition, she seeks to promote health equity and access for those disproportionally affected by externalizing behaviors and their related risk factors (i.e., Black and Latinx youth) via the development of innovative policy and intervention strategies.
- Somers, J.A., Stiles, K., MacNaughton, G.A., Schiff, S.J., Shen, Y., & Lee, S.S. (in press). Antecedents and consequences of child externalizing problems: Differences in dynamic parent-child processes. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology.
- Schiff, S.J. & Lee, S.S. (2022). Peer correlates of conduct problems in girls. Aggressive Behavior.
- Kechter, A., Ceasar, R.C., Simpson, K.A., Schiff, S.J., Dunton, G. F., Bluthenthal, R.N., & Barrington-Trimis, J.L. (2022). A chocolate cake or a chocolate vape? Young adults describe their relationship with food and weight in the context of nicotine vaping. Appetite.
- Schiff, S.J., Kechter, A., Simpson, K.A., Ceasar, R.C., Braymiller, J.L., & BarringtonTrimis, J.L. (2021). Accessing vaping products when underage: A qualitative study of young adults in Southern California. Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 23(5), 836-841.
- Kechter, A., Simpson, K.A., Ceasar, R.C., Schiff, S.J., Yamaguchi, N., Bluthenthal, R. N., Smiley, S. L., & Barrington-Trimis, J. L. (2021). Trajectories of nicotine use leading to dual and cyclical tobacco product use in young adults. Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 24(7), 986-993.
- Simpson, K.A., Kechter, A., Schiff, S.J., Braymiller, J.L., Yamaguchi, N., Ceasar, R.C., Bluthenthal, R.N., Barrington-Trimis, J.L. (2021). Characterizing symptoms of ecigarette dependence: A qualitative study of young adults. BMC Public Health, 21(1), 1-9.
Yamaguchi, N., Kechter, A., Schiff, S.J., Braymiller, J.L., Ceasar, R.C., Simpson, K.A., Bluthenthal, R.N., & Barrington-Trimis, J.L. (2021). Critical challenges and creative solutions for quantifying nicotine vaping: Qualitative reports from young adults. Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 24(3), 416-420. - Peraza, N., Bello, M.S., Schiff, S.J., Cho, J., Zhang, Y., Callahan, C., Tackett, A., & Leventhal, A.M. (2021). Drug and alcohol dependence acute effects of pod-style ecigarettes in vaping-naïve smokers. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 228, 109083.
- Leventhal, A.M., Madden, D.R., Peraza, N., Schiff, S.J., Lebovitz, L., Whitted, L., Barrington-Trimis, J.L., Mason, T.B., Anderson, M.K., & Tackett, A.P. (2021). Effect of Exposure to e-Cigarettes With Salt vs Free-Base Nicotine on the Appeal and Sensory Experience of Vaping: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Network Open, 4(1), e2032757-e2032757.
- Schiff, S.J., Liu, F., Cruz, T.B., Unger, J.B., Cwalina, S.N., Leventhal, A.M., McConnell, R., & Barrington-Trimis, J. (2021). E-cigarette and cigarette purchasing behavior among young adults before and after implementation of a state-wide Tobacco 21 policy. Tobacco Control, 30(2), 206-211.
- Kechter, A., Schiff, S.J., Simpson, K.A., Ceasar, R.C., Braymiller, J.L., McConnell, R., Leventhal, A.M., & Barrington-Trimis, J.L. (2021). Young adult perspectives on their respiratory health symptoms since vaping. Substance Abuse, 42(4), 428-432.
- Barrington-Trimis, J.L., Bae, D., Schiff, S., Davis, J., Unger, J.B., & Leventhal, A.M. (2020). Characterizing the predictive validity of measures of susceptibility to future use of combustible, vaporized, and edible cannabis products in adolescent never-users. Addiction, 115(12), 2339-2348.
- Barrington-Trimis, J.L., Yang, Z., Schiff, S., Unger, J., Cruz, T.B., Urman, R., Cho, J., Samet, J., Leventhal, A.M., Berhane, K., & McConnell, R. (2020). E-cigarette product characteristics and subsequent frequency of cigarette smoking. Pediatrics, 145(5).
- Leventhal, A.M., Cho, J., Barrington-Trimis, J.L., Pang, R.D., Schiff, S., & Kirkpatrick, M.G. (2020). Sensory attributes of e-cigarette flavors and nicotine as mediators of interproduct differences in appeal among young adults. Tobacco Control, 29(6), 679-686.
- Kirkpatrick, M.G., Cruz, T.B., Unger, J.B., Herrera, J., Schiff, S., & Allem, J.P. (2019). Cartoon-based e-cigarette marketing: associations with susceptibility to use and perceived expectations of use. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 201, 109-114
Phuc (Nick) T. Nguyen
Nick Nguyen is a second-year doctoral student in the Clinical Science program at UC Berkeley, under the mentorship of Dr. Stephen Hinshaw. His current research interests include: developmental psychopathology; social determinants of health; risks and resilience; combating stigma surrounding mental illness through humanization; making science accessible via data viz, infographics, and storytelling; advocating for policy changes and promoting health equity among marginalized communities. Nick’s work is generously supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Fellowship, as well as UCLA and the Child Mind Institute. When not at work, Nick enjoys spending time with his family (e.g., cooking new dishes, playing with his two dogs) and tackling his ever-growing backlog of video games.
In collaboration with the HEART Lab, Nick hopes to identify subgroups of youth that are at high risk for self-harm and suicidality and explore, among these groups, specific cultural protective factors that may protect youth from harm. He is also planning to examine the association between neighborhood characteristics and mental health disparities using geocoding techniques.
- Tampke, E. C., Gordon, C. T., Ringle, J., Nguyen, P. T., Ende, G., Tyler, P. M. (2023). The Moderating Roles of Childhood Adversity on Program Outcomes in Residential Care. Residential Treatment for Children and Youth. https://doi.org/10/1080/0886571X.2023.2266987
- Gosling, C. J., Caparos, S., Pinabiaux, C., Schwarzer, G., Rücker, G., Agha, S. S., Alrouh, H., Ambler, A., Anderson, P., Andiarena, A., Arnold, L. E., Arseneault, L., Asherson, P., Babinski, L., Barbati, V., Barkley, R., Barros, A. J. D., Barros, F., Bates, J. E.,…Nguyen, P. T.,…Cortese, S. (2023). Association between relative age at school and persistence of ADHD in prospective studies: An individual participant data meta-analysis. The Lancet Psychiatry, S2215036623002729. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(23)00272-9
- Meza, J. I., Godoy, S., Nguyen, P. T., Perris, G., Grella, C., & Bath, E. (2023). Risk Profiles of Suicide Attempts Among Girls with Histories of Commercial Sexual Exploitation: A Latent Class Analysis. Child Abuse & Neglect. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2023.106036
- Nguyen, P. T., Gordon, C. T., Owens, E. B., & Hinshaw, S. P. (2022). Patterns of Childhood Adversity among Women with and without Childhood ADHD: Links to Adult Psychopathology and Global Functioning. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-022-00994-2
- Nguyen, P. T., Basson, D., & Perry, D. T. (2022). Patterns of Trauma among Youth Seeking Mental Health Services at a Community-Based Clinic: A Latent Class Analysis Approach. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-022-00998-y
- Gordon, C. T., Nguyen, P. T., Mitchell, A., & Tyler, P. M (2022). Profiles of Childhood Adversity and Associated Psychopathology in Youth Entering Residential Care. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0001325
- Hinshaw, S. P., Nguyen, P. T., O’Grady, S. M., & Rosenthal, E. A. (2022). ADHD in Girls and Women: Underrepresentation, Longitudinal Processes, and Key Directions. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 63, 484–496. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13480
- Nguyen, P. T. & Hinshaw, S. P. (2020). Understanding the Stigma Associated with ADHD: Hope for the Future? ADHD Report. 28(5), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1521/adhd.2020.28.5.1
- Nguyen, P. T., Basson, D., & Perry, D. T. (2022). Uncovering Trauma Patterns at a Community Clinic: Links to Mental Health Needs. Oakland, California: WestCoast Children’s Clinic. https://tinyurl.com/WCCTrauma
- Perry, D. T., Basson, D., & Nguyen, P. T. (in press). Spotlight on Community Violence: An Underrecognized Danger to Children’s Mental Health. Oakland, California: WestCoast Children’s Clinic.
- Basson, D., Nguyen, P. T., & Perry, D. T. (in press). Child Strengths: Shifting the Perspective from Risk to Positive Assets. Oakland, California: WestCoast Children’s Clinic.
Chun-Chi (Sarah) Yang
Chun-Chi (Sarah) Yang, a former high school teacher for 20 years in Taiwan, is a graduate student of School Psychology PhD program in School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. From her teaching experience, she became interested in how emotional disorders, particularly depression, develop and manifest in childhood and adolescence. She is focused on investigating how factors of sleep, culture and technology impact the regulation of emotions and emotional disorders in adolescent girls. She is committed to promoting adolescent well-being in school settings.
Monica Oliver, MsEd
Monica Oliver, MsEd is a predoctoral student from UIC Barcelona. She is currently a volunteer researcher at the HEART Lab. In 2019 she completed her studies of bachelor’s and master’s degrees to become a General Health Psychologist in Spain, where she is originally from. In May 2022 she graduated with a MsEd in School and Mental Health Counseling at the University of Pennsylvania. Monica is devoted to serving Spanish-speaking and ethnoracial minorities through her work as a clinician. Her experience has been in community mental health centers, and she has focused on supporting clients with trauma-related experiences. Monica’s research focuses on investigating the relationship between trauma and risk behaviors, specifically the complexities of intergenerational trauma and parenting experiences. At the HEART Lab, Monica is participating in studying suicidal behaviors among female youth in the Juvenile Legal System. In her free time, she likes to spend time with her family, and she is always eager to discover new places.
Francisco Reinosa Segova, PhD
Francisco A. Reinosa Segovia, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the ALACRITY Center at UCLA. His research work broadly focuses on examining feasible pathways to disseminate and implement evidence-based treatments for people of color (POC) and underserved communities, with an emphasis on culturally responsive practices and Latinx communities. Dr. Reinosa Segovia was born and raised in Mexico City and is fully bilingual/bicultural. Dr. Reinosa Segovia earned his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). Prior to beginning his work in the ALACRITY Center, he completed his pre-doctoral internship at Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior where he specialized in providing trauma-focused care to children, adolescents and family members impacted by traumatic/adverse events.
Adrian flores, PhD
Dr. Adrián I. P-Flores holds a doctorate in the social and human behavioral sciences, specializing in Gender & Women’s Studies, with a minor in Critical Geographies and Social Theory, from the University of Arizona. He currently serves as the Emerging Voices Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies at UC Santa Barbara’s Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion and Public Life. He is also the former UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Comparative Literature at UCLA. He possesses expertise in literature, philosophy and psychoanalysis—and his interdisciplinary research centers on the racial history of suicide and the psychic life of antiblackness, bridging the mental health sciences and humanities. At the core of his critique of suicide research lies a twofold question: What is suicide and how does its episteme reinforce the structuring antagonism of antiblackness in the making and unmaking of the “modern human”? His book manuscript, “What Is Suicide? Entanglements of Philosophy and Literature in the ‘Afterlife of Slavery,’” which is in the final stages of completion, directly engages “Black suicide” as a problem for thought. It challenges the “humanity of suicide” within the mental health sciences, revealing how the episteme of suicide relies on the structural disavowal of an antiblack racial logic embedded in its core terms: “suicide” and the “human.”
Since Spring 2022, Dr. Flores has been collaborating with UCLA professor of psychiatry, Dr. Jocelyn Meza, and her nationally renowned HEART Lab at UCLA. As part of a UCLA Initiative to Study Hate grant, their collaboration focuses on Black children’s suicide, seeking to address the antiblack racial logics that underlie prevailing empirical studies of child suicide prevention. Their research promotes interdisciplinary approaches for reevaluating suicide, both its etiology and academic study, as a structural problem of racism. Together, they will co-edit an anthology of essays by scholars from various fields, both in the humanities and sciences, exploring the intricate intersections of racialized violence and suicide. The anthology, tentatively titled “Vanquished Shadows: Unraveling Suicide and Structural Violence in the Afterlives of Colonization and Slavery,” promises an interdisciplinary exploration of these critical issues.
Research Assistants
Madison Aquino
Madison Aquino is a Research Assistant in the HEART Lab at UCLA. She is a current UCLA undergraduate student majoring in Psychology. She has prior experience of volunteering for Crisis Text Line, Sunrise Senior Living, and various leadership positions in Psychology honors societies. After graduation, she plans on attending graduate school to become a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist.
Madison is currently doing research for the Youth Mental Health Academy project to help encourage underrepresented high school students to pursue mental health careers. She is working on the evaluation core of the program and will also serve as one of the program mentors for the high school students.
Habiba Amir
Habiba Amir is a Research Assistant in the HEART LAB and a third-year undergraduate psychology student at UCLA. Her research interests focus on precision medicine; she is interested in investigating culturally adapted and trauma-informed EBPs for psychological disorders and examining disparate mental-health outcomes for ethnic-minority and disadvantaged groups. After completing undergrad, she plans to pursue a PhD in clinical psychology and eventually open her own clinical practice. Currently, Habiba is assisting with the lab’s Discrimination and Suicide study which aims to examine the effect of cultural protective factors on suicide and self-harm in Black and Latinx college students. In her free time, she enjoys making ceramics, reading novels, and spending time with family and friends.
Emilia Barriga Cortez
Emilia Barriga Cortez is a Research Assistant in the HEART Lab at UCLA and a second-year psychology undergraduate student. Her research interests are the effects of stress and anxiety, specifically in children and adolescents. She plans on obtaining a PhD in Clinical Psychology and becoming a licensed psychologist.
Shirley De La Cruz
Shirley De La Cruz is a Research Assistant with the HEART Lab and has graduated with her B.A in Psychology and a Central American Studies minor from UCLA. She hopes to apply to graduate school to pursue a degree in the social and behavioral sciences. She has experience working within community and student organizations for underrepresented BIPOC and Latinx groups. Her interests include liberation/community psychology, mental wellness, social determinants of health, and community-based participatory research methods.
Jesse AMaya
Jesse Amaya is a Research Assistant in the HEART Lab at UCLA. He is a third-year undergraduate majoring in Cognitive Science with a minor in Applied Developmental Psychology. He has prior experience in research with Project Stride at Charles Drew University, where he studied the relationship between urban ecology and mental health. Currently, he is a McNair Scholar researching the acculturation gap and its relationship to suicidality in Latinx youth. He is assisting in the BUAP Suicide Study, a qualitative study based on interviews conducted with college students in Mexico. He plans on pursuing a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and eventually opening his own clinic in South Los Angeles.
Alumni
Aleeza west, RA
Aleeza West is a Research Assistant in the HEART Lab and is currently a soon-to-be graduating student at UCLA majoring in psychology. Her research interests focus on anxiety, depression, and suicide. She intends to obtain a PhD in clinical psychology. Aleeza is assisting on the ALACRITY research study, which focuses on digital suicide interventions in ethnoracially diverse community college students. After graduating, she will take on the position as a Lab Manager for Dr. Michelle Craske at UCLA’s Anxiety and Depression Research Center.
Sofia Acevedo, RA
Sofia Acevedo is a Research Assistant in the HEART Lab at UCLA and a fourth year Psychology undergraduate at UCLA. After graduating, she plans to take a gap year and further her experience by continuing with research and internships. Her future plans include receiving her doctorate in clinical psychology and becoming a licensed psychologist who specializes in working with adolescents.
Sofia is assisting with the Youth Mental Health Academy project, which aims to encourage high school students to attend higher education and explore mental health careers.
Leah Eslamian, RA
Leah Eslamian was a Research Assistant in the HEART Lab and is a 4th-year UCLA undergraduate majoring in Psychobiology with a minor in Brain and Behavioral Health. After graduating, she hopes to apply to medical school or pursue a graduate degree in Clinical Psychology. Leah is assisting in the lab’s study of interpersonal racism and self-injurious thoughts and behaviors among ethnoracially minoritized adolescents presenting to UCLA’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Services.
Tashalee R. Brown, Md, PhD
Tashalee R. Brown, M.D., Ph.D. is a second year Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellow. She received her BS in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and her M.D., Ph.D. from the Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan Kettering Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program. Tashalee R. Brown is currently a SAMHSA Minority Fellow and AACAP’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Emerging Leaders Fellow. Her research focuses on the social determinants of mental health, the role of racism in perpetuating racial/ethnic disparities in mental health care, community-partnered psychiatry interventions, and the implementation of evidence-based anti-racism training in psychiatry. Her future goals include a career in academic psychiatry, providing clinical care to patients in a community psychiatry setting while pursuing research that aims to improve the mental health care of underserved populations. In her free time, she enjoys baking, cooking, and biking.
Brianna Flores, RA
Brianna Flores is a Research Assistant in the HEART Lab and is a current 4th-year UCLA undergraduate majoring in Psychobiology and minoring in Brain and Behavioral Health as well as Evolutionary Medicine. She is interested in going to medical school or graduate school for Clinical Neuropsychology post-graduation. Currently, Brianna is assisting on the ALACRITY research study, which seeks to pre-test a digital suicide intervention aimed at mitigating the heightened risk of self-harm/suicide among community college students.