Current Lab Members

My research program focuses on how children in poverty and other marginalized youth adapt to challenging developmental contexts. I conduct research out in communities with difficult-to-reach low-income and BIPOC children and families—striving to understand the substantial resilience that can be found in this population. I use community engagement practices to successfully work with low-income communities to conduct research that addresses their needs and concerns. We have established ourselves in communities previously closed off to research owing to historical abuses of people of color. Our resilience focus and anti-deficit mindset have been key to this success. 

Two decades of research have led to an integrated understanding of the biological, cognitive, behavioral, and affective adaptations that occur as children grow and develop in the context of economic hardship.  Incorporating insights from developmental psychobiology and adaptive calibration models to better understand how and why children in poverty come to develop what appear to be maladaptive coping repertoires, we developed the Adaptation to Poverty-related Stress (APRS) model. The APRS posits that life in poverty is often comprised of exposure to chronic, uncontrollable stress, which taxes children’s developing self-regulatory systems. As a result, children in poverty develop coping profiles that are well suited to and are adaptive given the environments in which they develop, which are more likely to be unpredictable, dangerous, violent, and resource-scarce. The same skills, however, may prove ineffective or detrimental in other contexts. Thus, so-called maladaptive coping is simultaneously adaptive and maladaptive depending on context. 

The Building a Strong Identity and Coping Skills program (BaSICS) was developed according to the principles delineated in the strengths-based APRS. BaSICS was designed to provide low-income youth with culturally affirmative care that would improve mental health by targeting mechanisms of stress-adaptation. The content and format of BaSICS were designed using social justice education principles, which require that (a) youth voices be heard, heeded, and validated, (b) learning environments and content be co-constructed with youth, and (c) youth interventions sow the seeds of transformation. BaSICS is guided by these principles, bringing scaffolding and skill development to the table while youth bring their lived experiences (stressors, strengths) to which skill building is applied.  

Further, our team was among the first to use experimental methods to examine the physiologic signatures of different types of coping skills. This direction of my work has been critical in linking our interventions with the need for innovative solutions to health disparities. Since dysregulation of the stress response system has emerged as a mechanism of SES- and race-based health disparities, we are examining the extent to which improving coping in children facing chronic stress can translate into improvement in the physiologic stress response system. Most recently we have found that a multi-system approach to understanding stress physiology has illuminated patterns of BaSICS-related intervention response suggesting recalibration of the HPA-SAM system. 

Jason José’s research is dedicated to understanding the psychobiological mechanisms involved in stress-illness pathways as well as identifying putative psychosocial buffers (e.g., coping, social support) that may mitigate risk of developing psychopathology by getting “underneath the skin.” Their multilevel, person-centered line of basic research aims to translate toward therapeutic routes to stress response system repair (e.g., affect, HPA, SNS, immune, neural) that might be leveraged in the design of more effective, person-centered interventions for at-risk children and families.  

Mary Veneziano manages the CaRES Lab and ongoing data collection for the BaSICS projects with the undergraduate team at the CaRES lab in University Park. Mary joined the CaRES Lab after receiving a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Penn State University. Her previous research included work on investigating social cognition of at-risk parents and youth. Mary has a passion for working with children and families who have experienced adverse childhood events. In her free time, she likes to bake, spend time with her family, and travel. 

Tabatha Hahn is the intervention specialist for the BaSICS intervention projects. She has a master’s degree in Community Psychology and Social Change at Penn State. Prior to her work on this project she supervised two Multisystemic Therapy (MST) teams in the Harrisburg, PA area, was a National Trainer for the PAX Good Behavioral Game and was an intervention specialist on the LEGACY Together: Strengthening After School Programs project at Penn State. She has a passion for working with children and families, specifically through the implementation of evidence-based prevention programs. 

Metzli Lombera (she/her) is a fifth-year graduate student in clinical child psychology and a child maltreatment T32 predoctoral fellow at Penn State. She is a student therapist at the Penn State Psychological Clinic, where her work focuses on psychodiagnostic and neuropsychological assessments and evidence-based treatments for youth and their parents, with a particular emphasis on youth who have been exposed to child abuse and neglect. Metzli’s research interests include how to operationalize childhood maltreatment, victimization associated with a child’s cultural identity (e.g., a child experiencing emotional abuse due to being part of the LGBT+ community), and mechanisms of action for culturally adapted treatments targeting childhood abuse and neglect.

Bre Genaro is currently a graduate student in the child clinical psychology program. She received her B.A. in psychology from Bryn Mawr College in 2018. She worked as a research technician on the Development of Self-Regulation Dynamics project. Bre is exploring coping, self-regulation, and biological stress response systems in children with poverty-related stress. She enjoys watching Netflix, exploring museums and comedy shows.

Adithi Rajagopalan is a student in the Child Clinical psychology program at Penn State. She graduated with a B.A in Psychology and Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University, and completed her M.S.Ed and M.Phil.Ed at the University of Pennsylvania. She gained clinical and research experience implementing community-based interventions with children. Adithi has worked as a research coordinator at the Stanford Pediatric Pain Management Clinic. Adithi is interested in using more strengths-based frameworks to provide support for youth and families experiencing high levels of stress. Additionally, she is interested in the intersectionality of race, SES and the juvenile justice system. In her free time, she loves to bake, run, watch reality TV and travel. 

Beck Scheinberg is a current Child Clinical psychology student at Penn State. They graduated with a B.A from Duke University, majoring in Math and minoring in Psychology . After graduation, they were an Intramural Research Trainee at the National Institute of Mental Health’s Emotion and Development branch, focusing on youth with irritability and ADHD. Beck is interested in intervention and treatment work for high-risk youth and how to quantify the efficacy of such programs. They are particularly excited about predictive modeling and are hopeful they’ll continue applying their math background to build machine learning models while at Penn State. In their free time, Beck enjoys all things Jewish and Queer. They also love spending time in art museums and doing yoga.

Madison Miles is a student in the Child Clinical psychology program at PSU. She received her B.A. in psychology, anthropology, and fine art from Case Western Reserve University. During her time as a research coordinator at the UC Davis medical school, she worked with both the TAMI services project and EPI-CAL project, housed within the UCD early psychosis clinics. This work was primarily in experiences of comorbid psychosis and trauma symptoms, particularly amongst juvenile justice and child welfare involved youth. Madison has clinical and research interests in youth and young adult populations who have experienced chronic adversity or potentially traumatic events (PTEs); and in bringing a developmental and complex trauma perspective to understanding the impacts of chronic adversity exposure, including poverty, juvenile justice and child welfare exposure, and familial and community intergenerational trauma. Additional interests are in bringing clinical services to underserved populations and understanding the effects of social determinants of health on the development of serious mental illness (SMI).