Faculty Mentors

The Behavioral Sleep Medicine (BSM) Lab is directed by Phyllis Zee, MD, PhD, and Jennifer Mundt, PhD, and is housed within the Center for Circadian and Sleep Medicine. Our lab focuses on innovations in cognitive and behavioral interventions to improve sleep health, including cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and mindfulness meditation for insomnia and other sleep disorders. Of particular interest to the lab is the use of digital and telehealth delivery to disseminate these interventions. Projects include telehealth and app-based programs using mindfulness and behavioral interventions for narcolepsy, tests of the use of CBT for insomnia (CBT-I) and/or mindfulness on other conditions, such as obstructive sleep apnea, migraine headaches and cardiovascular diseases. In addition to intervention studies, the BSM Lab also conducts and collaborates on studies examining the psychological and physiological mechanisms related to sleep and circadian disturbances, autonomic functioning and pain. Visit the BSM Lab website.

The CATALYST Lab, led by Bonnie Spring, PhD, develops, evaluates and delivers technology-assisted interventions that aim to prevent and treat chronic diseases by addressing obesity, poor quality diet, physical inactivity and tobacco use, alone or in combination. We develop effective, resource-efficient interventions that incorporate digital components to extend population reach, accommodate individual differences and adapt to changes in state. The CATALYST Lab is wholly funded by the NIH and is based in Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine's Department of Preventive Medicine. We maintain multiple internal and external collaborations, and support activities with NUCATS and the Lurie Cancer Center. The CATALYST Lab team has streamlined its current clinical trials to be entirely delivered remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, expanding its reach across the United States.

The Center for Prevention Implementation Methodology is directed by Hendricks Brown, PhD. We seek to learn what the goals, opportunities and capacities are of communities, institutions and agencies around prevention programs designed to reduce drug abuse, HIV infection and sexual risk behavior. This information is critical to our planning to address the needs in the practice of, as well as research on, prevention implementation over the next five years and beyond.

To facilitate successful program implementation and evaluation at the federal, state, county and local levels, we are developing new methods for improving implementation in communities as well as new methods for conducting implementation research, quality improvement and evaluation in practice settings. Our methodologic tools include many of the new "system science" approaches that address the complex, interacting and multilevel factors that affect program implementation, program quality and ultimate impact on communities. These system science methods include social network analysis, agent based modeling and intelligent data analysis.

Our team collaborates and consults on implementation projects that are funded or being planned, as well as provides training to diverse groups engaged in implementation. We also provide opportunities for early career investigators to receive mentoring in this new field of implementation science and provide funding for pilot projects on a competitive basis. We provide opportunities for postdoctoral fellowships and collaborations with leading prevention implementation scientists across the country.

The Exercise and Health Lab, led by Siobhan Phillips, PhD, is focused on understanding the determinants and health outcomes of physical activity participation and the translation of this research into practice using technology and innovative research methods. We are particularly interested in the role of physical activity in cancer prevention, control and survivorship. Additionally, we are interested in exploring ways to get everyone to be more active.

Current research focuses on developing and implementing a mobile phone-delivered physical activity promotion intervention for breast cancer survivors using the Multiphase Optimization Strategy Trial methodology and an observational study examining changes in patient reported outcomes and physical activity in breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy using ecological momentary assessment methodology.

James Griffith, PhD, focuses on the development of measurement tools, including computerized questionnaires and mobile apps, for urology patients with a view toward making better treatment decisions.

Griffith is also interested in mental health, including measurement issues in rumination and autobiographical memory. Current projects include Multidisciplinary Assessment of Pelvic Pain, Symptoms of Lower Urinary Tract Dysfunction Research Network and collaborations with the Apkarian Pain Lab and T. Schnitzer's Lab examining clinical trials in spinal cord injury patients.

Northwestern University's Center for Applied Health Research on Aging (CAHRA) promotes informed decision making and actions leading to optimal health and well-being among individuals and families over the life span. The Center explores the cognitive, psychosocial and health system factors that affect an individual's ability to successfully manage one's health and develops interventions to help patients and families obtain, process and understand health information to make appropriate health decisions and adopt recommended behaviors.

CAHRA include six major research programs, including the Health Literacy and Learning Program, Cognitive Aging Program, Psychosocial Support Program, Life Course Health Porgram, Treatment Adherence Program, and the Measurement and Analyses Program. 

The CAHRA director is Michael Wolf, PhD, MPH. with additional mentorship provided by Rebecca Mullen Lovett, PhD. 

The Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing conducts translational research to improve the health of the LGBTQ+ community and to increase understanding of the development of sexual orientation and gender identity. We seek to achieve this mission by developing innovative, evidence-based interventions, collaborating with the LGBTQ+ community, training the next generation of LGBTQ+ scholars and disseminating research findings to scientific and general audiences. The primary mentor is Michael Newcomb, PhD.

Judith Moskowitz, PhD, MPH, studies behavioral and psychosocial factors in the context of significant illness or other life stress. Her current research is focused on the adaptive role of positive emotion regulation for support of beneficial health behavior change (such as diet and physical activity) and prevention of maladaptive health behaviors (such as substance abuse). Her work addresses health and health behaviors in a range of patient populations, including dementia caregivers, high school students, people with type 2 diabetes, women with stage IV breast cancer and people living with HIV. She examines the unique adaptive role of positive emotion in the process of coping with various types of health-related and other life stress and, through randomized trials, determines whether a positive emotion regulation intervention can increase positive affect, reduce stress and depression, and improve health behaviors in at-risk samples. Visit the lab website.

This research lab and primary mentor Brian Hitsman, PhD, incorporate treatment, human laboratory and genetic epidemiologic methods to identify psychological and biological factors associated with the development and persistence of nicotine dependence. The primary goal is to inform the development of innovative psychological and pharmacological smoking cessation therapies. Current investigations focus on the neurobehavioral regulation of cigarette cravings and smoking behavior in smokers with and without chronic depression and an effectiveness trial of maintenance therapy for nicotine dependence. Visit the Hitsman Lab website.

This lab is directed by Emily Rogalski, PhD. Rogalski's lab, within the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease, focuses on structural neuroimaging and non-pharmacologic interventions related to cognitive systems in healthy aging and neurodegenerative disease. She leads studies on SuperAging, primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and atypical forms of Alzheimer's disease. Her studies investigate the relationship between cognitive mechanisms of language and memory in addition to structural as well as molecular brain changes (measured by MRI and PET) that accompany aging and dementia. She also develops support, intervention and educational interventions for individuals with dementia. Training in her lab provides students with skills for imaging analysis as well as non pharmacologic intervention.

The Clinical Neuropsychology lab is directed by Sandra Weintraub, PhD, ABCN, ABPP. Weintraub's lab is within the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease and focuses on studies of cognition in "normal" aging, "SuperAging" (better than normal cognitive functioning in the elderly) and age-associated dementias, such as those caused by Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration.

Current studies address behavioral, genetic and neuroimaging markers of these conditions, risk factors for healthy and diseased cognitive aging (including the relationship between sleep and memory loss) and the relationship between cognitive deficits and neuropathology at postmortem brain autopsy. One of the key areas in which students are conducting research is the clinical syndrome of primary progressive aphasia. This disorder is characterized by the insidious onset and progressive loss over time of language function (aphasia) due to neurodegenerative disease that targets the left cerebral hemisphere neuroanatomical network underlying normal language function.

Findings from this lab have been published in top neurology and neuropsychology journals and have spanned neuropathology, neurolinguistics, structural and functional neuroimaging, genetic risk factors, and the impact of disease on patients and their caregivers. Cross-lab collaborations in Chicago and Evanston permit students to broaden the translational value of research.

This lab focuses on understanding how cognitive control processes — those processes that help guide thought and behavior based on internally generated goals — are altered in individuals with or at risk for various forms of psychopathology. We use translational laboratory and fMRI approaches adopted from the cognitive neurosciences to study the functional neural networks involved in the control of attention, working memory and behavioral responding and how these are altered in individuals with psychopathology (primarily schizophrenia and affective psychoses) and those at genetic or clinical risk for such disorders, as well as the impact of pharmacological treatments on these networks. Students in our lab have the opportunity to learn diagnostic and clinical assessment procedures of severe psychopathology, standard neuropsychological methods for evaluating cognitive functioning, and laboratory- and fMRI-based acquisition and analysis of neurophysiologic data. The primary mentor is James Reilly, PhD.

This lab is directed by Tamar Gefen, PhD, within the Mesulam Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center. Gefen's research focuses on investigating clinic-pathologic relationships in neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer's, frontotemporal lobar degeneration) and trajectories of highly successful aging ("SuperAging"). Methods include neuropathologic evaluation based on brain autopsy, stereological analysis and integration of histologic markers with antemortem imaging and comprehensive neuropsychological data.

The Neuroimaging & Applied Computational Anatomy Lab is focused on the development of multidimensional and multimodal neuroimaging biomarkers using the tools of computational anatomy. Working with collaborators from engineering, mathematics, psychology and clinical specialties, we focus on the following major areas.

• Mapping of brain structures using MRI: We develop automated pipelines to delineate brain structures based on simultaneous mappings of multiple structures from multiple atlases. This includes deep brain structures (such as the hippocampus, amygdala, thalamus and basal ganglia) and cortical structures.
• Complex neuroimaging biomarkers: We develop modeling and statistical approaches for the analysis of these maps. We develop frameworks for joint, integrated analyses of multidimensional, multimodal information based on the structural mapping of the brain.
• Clinical applications: We are interested in developing neuroimaging markers to characterize neuropsychiatric disorders, disease progression and prediction and monitoring of treatment.
• Neuroinformatics (data sharing and data mediation)

The primary mentor is Lisanne Jenkins, PhD, and the secondary mentor is Lei Wang, PhD.

The Center for Childhood Resilience (CCR) is committed to promoting the training of child and adolescent mental health workers from a public health perspective. It is generally acknowledged that the vast majority of children and adolescents in need of mental health services do not receive them through traditional delivery methods, such as fee-for-service individual treatment. In response to this public health crisis, our center is working within the community to identify mental health needs and to disseminate and implement empirically supported treatments that are viable within community settings.

The emphasis of this program is on school mental health, community-based trauma training, restorative justice, and public policy and advocacy. Our research is focused on fidelity of treatments as they move out of the research lab into the community as well as on the outcomes of dissemination and implementation, including moderators and mediators that make for more effective treatment outcomes.

Primary mentors in CCR are Colleen Cicchetti, PhD, Karen R. Gouze, PhD, and Tali Raviv, PhD.

The Neurodevelopmental Disabilities Laboratory is directed by Molly Losh, PhD. The lab investigates the language and related abilities that define autism and related neurodevelopmental disabilities and the neuropsychological, genetic and environmental features that may be associated with the behavioral and cognitive profiles of these different groups.

Specific study goals include:

• Understanding the different developmental strengths and weaknesses in language and related abilities in autism and related neurodevelopmental disabilities.
• Defining subtle language and neuropsychological profiles that may relate to the genes involved in autism and fragile X syndrome, among unaffected relatives.
• Documenting the interactions between genes and environment in neurodevelopmental disabilities.

Our research program aims to build neuroscience-informed behavioral interventions that effectively treat depression. Our goals focus on three areas:

• Identifying the neurophysiologic substrates of emotion in depression
• Conducting treatment outcome research to identify neurophysiologic and affective predictors of accelerated therapeutic response
• Adapting and developing behavioral activation interventions that target specific neurophysiologic mechanisms of change in depression

Current projects include a telemedicine behavioral activation treatment for anhedonia among women with mood disorders, testing maternal reward learning in postpartum and characterizing accelerators of treatment response to behavioral activation. The primary mentor is Jackie Gollan, PhD.

The Bipolar Disorder Technology Laboratory focuses on improving our understanding and treatment of bipolar disorder. Even with current pharmacological treatment, bipolar disorder is a costly, chronic mental illness with high levels of morbidity and mortality. The addition of psychosocial interventions can improve outcomes, but access to these interventions is limited. The laboratory seeks to increase access to psychosocial interventions with demonstrated efficacy for bipolar disorder by utilizing behavioral intervention technologies (BITs), such as mobile apps. In addition, by using BITs to provide real-time assessment and feedback to patients and providers, we aim to increase intervention impact. Furthermore, by using BITs we are able to investigate underlying phenotypes and intervention mechanisms on behavioral targets with the goal of establishing the groundwork for ongoing improvement of bipolar disorder treatment. A randomized clinical trial investigating these questions using a smartphone-based BIT developed in the laboratory is currently underway.

Primary mentors are Evan Goulding, MD, PhD, and Cynthia Dopke, PhD.

The Chicago Lab for Emotion and Physiology, led by Stewart Shankman, PhD, is devoted to researching depression and similar internalizing disorders. Shankman's research focuses on the relation between depression and anxiety disorders, with an emphasis on neurobehavioral studies examining common versus specific emotional processes between these two disorders. He also has an important line of research examining the familial transmission and course of internalizing psychopathology. Shankman is currently the principal investigator on several NIMH-funded research studies examining biobehavioral processes of depression and/or anxiety.

The M-Body lab focuses on developing, testing and implementing evidence-based mental health interventions that are accessible and acceptable among high-risk, disadvantaged populations. Depressive disorders are common, particularly among disadvantaged individuals with less education and income, such as women who are unemployed. This high-risk, disadvantaged population is also more likely to hold stigmatizing beliefs and negative attitudes toward traditional mental health treatment and less likely to receive treatment.

The aims of the M-Body Lab are to:

• Understand stigmatizing attitudes and beliefs related to psychiatric disorders and treatment.
• Use this knowledge to adapt existing or develop new evidence-based interventions that are culturally appropriate and acceptable.
• Examine the efficacy of novel mental health interventions among high-risk, disadvantaged populations.
• Create a model of implementation that facilitates easy access to treatment and broad dissemination.

The primary mentor is Inger Burnett-Zeigler, PhD.

The Mothers and Babies Lab is directed by Darius Tandon, PhD, and focuses broadly on improving the mental health of pregnant individuals and their children. Mothers and Babies is an evidence-based intervention focused on prevention of postpartum depression that is implemented either in a group or individual modality in a variety of community and clinical settings. Current work includes a longitudinal examination of the program's effectiveness in improving responsive parenting and child self-regulation, testing of a newly created Fathers and Babies intervention for delivery to the partners of perinatal women, examination of implementation and effectiveness as Mothers and Babies is replicated among service providers across the United States, and studies that explore optimal intervention dosage using adaptive trial designs and "just-in-time" responses using text messages to supplement core intervention content. Visit the Mothers and Babies website for more information about the intervention and other studies.

This lab focuses on designing interventions to improve the long-term treatments and outcomes of patients with emotional disorders, with particular emphasis on OCD and anxiety disorders. The lab focuses primarily on two intersecting areas: the hypothesis-driven development and adaptation of empirically supported treatments and the use of translational research methods to identify critical, transdiagnostic mechanisms of dysfunction and barriers to recovery. A secondary focus of the laboratory is on eating disorders particularly as they relate to other OC spectrum conditions. The primary mentor is Tina Boisseau, PhD.

This lab focuses on data obtained in naturalistic clinical environments. Working in conjunction with a large behavioral health hospital and system, primary mentor Jason Washburn, PhD, ABPP, leverages both existing clinical data and large patient populations to examine novel topics in the areas of nonsuicidal self-injury, depression and eating disorders. He is also interested in dissemination and use of clinical outcomes in routine practice, as well as implementation and dissemination of evidence-based practices.

This lab is directed by Robert Hanlon, PhD, ABPP-CN, and Michael Brook, PhD, and is focused on forensic neuropsychology and neurocriminology, areas of research that involve the application of neuropsychological theory and methods to the understanding of the root causes of violent aggression and criminal behavior. Specific projects in the lab address the following:

• Neuropsychological functioning in homicide offenders
• Relationships between neurocognition, emotion processing, psychopathy and violent behavior
• The development of comprehensive violence risk assessment instruments

Students in our lab choose either Clinical Neuropsychology or Forensic Psychology as their Major Area of Study.

The Health Disparities & Public Policy Program provides opportunities to study the health needs and outcomes of underserved populations. We have studied men and women in jail and youth in juvenile detention. We have focused on the development and persistence of psychiatric disorders, disparities in risk and protective factors associated with psychiatric disorders, service utilization, victimization and perpetration of firearm violence and HIV/AIDS risk behaviors. The program's current study is the Northwestern Juvenile Project: Next Generation, a study of the children of the original 1,829 participants in the Northwestern Juvenile Project, focusing on characteristics that promote resilience in at-risk families. We recently received grants from the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Institutes of Health focusing on resilience to drug abuse and firearm involvement. In addition, we plan to examine how a parent's incarceration (especially during the child's lifetime) affects their children and what factors promote mental health, being substance-free, avoiding problem behaviors and positive educational outcomes.

Overall, our mission is to provide empirical data on populations that are seldom investigated, help improve services for traditionally underserved populations and guide the development of innovative public policy. Our studies have been cited in Supreme Court amicus briefs, in congressional hearings, in recent reports of the surgeon general and by many federal agencies, private agencies and advocacy groups.

Primary mentors are Linda Teplin, PhD, and Karen Abram, PhD.

The Mental Health Services and Policy Program (MHSPP) provides research, evaluation, outcomes management, training and technical assistance that helps improve the lives of individuals and families who receive publicly funded mental health services and supports providers across a range of service settings. Funded by state contracts and federal grants, including the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration as a member of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, MHSPP associates assess and address a range of mental health, child welfare and child trauma needs in community settings.

Our NCTSN-affiliated Center for Child Trauma Assessment, Services and Interventions (CCTASI) offers national expertise on trauma-informed assessment as well as practices and addresses gaps in trauma-informed services across a range of settings, including child welfare, juvenile justice and education. Our CCTASI work emphasizes programs for early education and transition age youth through training and implementation support, resource development and evaluation of trauma-informed services.

Our unique relationships with multiple state and federal agencies and court systems allow students to conduct program and policy evaluation using data from the child welfare, mental health and juvenile justice systems. Through research and evaluation, coursework and clinical practicum opportunities, MHSPP prepares students to contribute to policy and administrative decisions affecting youth and families who receive publicly-funded mental health, child trauma and child welfare services.

For the coming year, we seek applicants to the Clinical Psychology PhD Program with interests in the areas identified above or individuals interested in the Northwestern JD/PhD program who wish to focus on legal or policy issues associated with children who receive services in the public sector. Applicants with experience or interest in program evaluation are encouraged to apply.

Primary mentors are Neil Jordan, PhD, Cassandra Kisiel, PhD, and Heather Risser, PhD.