I completed my undergraduate studies at the State University of New York at Brockport, where I majored in psychology and philosophy. In the Department of Psychology, I owe thanks to Dr. Lori-Ann Forzona, an excellent instructor of research methods. In the Department of Philosophy, I benefited greatly from the guidance and mentorship of Drs. Gordon Barnes and Georges Dicker. For my senior year, I studied abroad at the University of Oxford, focusing tutorials on personality psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and the history of modern philosophy. After obtaining my B.S., I began work as a research assistant at the Mt. Hope Family Center. As a research assistant, I worked on a study investigating the impact of parental conflict and at-risk environments on preschool children’s coping and adjustment. At the Mt. Hope Family Center and the University of Rochester, I owe thanks to Drs. Patrick Davies, Melissa Sturge-Apple, and Mike Ripple.

 

In 2013 I began a Ph.D. at the University of Texas co-advised by Dr. Elliot Tucker-Drob and Dr. K. Paige Harden. During my doctoral training, I developed expertise in psychometrics, quantitative genetics, and structural equation modeling and became a core member of the Texas Twin Project. After obtaining my Ph.D. in 2017, I began a post-doctoral appointment at the University of Minnesota, working with Dr. Robert Krueger and Dr. Colin DeYoung. During this time, I also worked as a statistical consultant for the Center for Practice Transformation and taught research methods and statistics at Augsburg University. In 2020 I began working at Stony Brook University in the Department of Family, Population, and Preventative Medicine.

 

To date, my research has addressed many factors that contribute to mental health and well-being across the lifespan, including personality risk for antisocial behavior, particularly sensation-seeking and callous-unemotional traits. More recently, I have been developing statistical models of cumulative stress and social advantage and working with the World Trade Center Health Program to coordinate a U01 study of cognitive impairment in members of the FDNY who responded to the 9/11 attacks. I've also been using genetic data to conduct polygenic risk score analyses, Mendelian randomization, and long-term trajectory studies of post-traumatic stress disorder. In sum, I try my best to avoid intellectual and empirical pigeonholes by pursuing an interdisciplinary program of research that addresses a broad range of questions related to mental health and well-being across the lifespan.