Students

Kathleen Baggett: Current Student

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Leah Daigle: Current Students

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Travis C. Chafin, B.S., Criminal Justice & Criminology

Travis C. Chafin is a doctoral student at Georgia State University in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology. Travis holds a B.S. in psychology from Kennesaw State University. He will complete his M.S. in criminal justice and criminology Fall of 2020 while beginning his doctoral studies. His research interests include psychological traits of offenders and victims along with developmental theory.

Raven Muñoz, M.S., Applied Criminology

Raven Munoz is a doctoral student at Georgia State University in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology. She holds a B.S. in sociology and criminology & criminal justice from Northern Arizona University. She continued her education at Northern Arizona University earning a M.S. in Applied Criminology in Spring 2022. While at Northern Arizona University, Raven had the opportunity to serve as the university’s sexual violence prevention graduate assistant, planning campus-wide events and providing prevention education trainings to various student organizations and sports teams. Her research interests include sexual and intimate partner violence, gender roles and violence, and sexual violence prevention.

Xiangming Fang: Current Students

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Amanda Gilmore: Current Students

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Kennicia Fortson, B.S., School of Public Health

Kennicia Fortson is a doctoral student in the School of Public Health in the Health Promotion and Behavior concentration at Georgia State University. She holds a BS in Biology and BS in Psychology which she earned from the University of Georgia in 2016. She also completed graduate studies at the University of Georgia, earning her Master of Public Health and Master of Social Work in 2019. Her capstone project was an original research study examining the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and risk for opioid misuse. Kennicia’s research interests include child and adolescent health, racial/ethnic health disparities, community health, and early life stress/trauma. She is also interested in learning more about technology-based intervention and prevention methods. She will be joining the Alcohol and Sexual Assault Lab as a GRA, working under the direction of Dr. Amanda Gilmore.

Elaine Jackson, B.A., B.G.S., Psychology

Elaine Jackson is a doctoral student in the Public Health and Community Psychology dual-degree program with a concentration in Health Promotion and Behavior at Georgia State University. She graduated from Columbia College (MO) with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 2020. Prior to matriculating at Georgia State University, Elaine served on active duty in the U.S. Army as an engineer team leader, aiding in the execution of heavy construction projects such as the Veterans Memorial Walk in Hinesville, GA. Additionally, she served as a Community Relations and Development Intern with the Salvation Army Midland Division in St. Louis, MO, during which time she primarily worked with immigrant populations, including first-generation American adolescents from the West Indies. Herein, Elaine designed and modified after-school programming for low-income adolescents to be more participatory by incorporating kinesthetic learning and took part in a construction mission in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad & Tobago. Elaine has also interned at the Naval Research Laboratory of the Office of Naval Research under Dr. Mark Livingston, assisting in his research on visual sentences. Presently, Elaine works under the supervision of Dr. Amanda Gilmore within the Alcohol and Sexual Assault Prevention Lab on a research project seeking to adapt an intervention designed to reduce sexual assault perpetration and disordered alcohol use among college populations to the military.

Jessica Prince, B.S., Clinical-Community program

Jessica Prince is a doctoral student in the Clinical-Community program at Georgia State University. She received her Bachelor of Science in Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2018. Upon graduating, she worked as a research coordinator at the University of Michigan, Injury Prevention Center on a randomized control trial aiming to reduce violence and alcohol consumption among high risk youth. Her research interests are broadly in 1) primary and secondary prevention programs for reducing substance use and violence and 2) implementing technology-based interventions to reduce barriers to access among under-resourced communities.

Nashalys K. Salamanca, B.A., Psychology and Women’s Studies

Nashalys K. Salamanca is a doctoral student in the Clinical-Community Psychology program. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Women’s Studies from Muhlenberg College. Before joining Dr. Amanda Gilmore’s lab, Nashalys worked in various research and practice settings, including at Stanford University, disseminating evidence-based programs to over 250 schools and colleges nationwide. She has served as a longtime volunteer at Caminar Latino, an Atlanta-area domestic violence organization serving Latinx families. These experiences sparked her research interests in applying an ecological and intersectional framework to the treatment and prevention of interpersonal violence.

Ruschelle Leone: Current Students

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Jenna Aungst, B.S., Biology

Jenna Aungst is a Master of Public Health candidate with the School of Public Health concentrating in Epidemiology. She graduated from Georgia State University in 2020 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology. Currently, she is working as a Graduate Research Assistant with the Alcohol and Sexual Assault Prevention Lab assisting Dr. Ruschelle Leone with the Development of an Alcohol, Cannabis, and Sexual Assault Risk Reduction Program for High Risk College Women. Jenna also works as a Project Manager and Research Analyst for the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office, where she is responsible for mortality surveillance and demonstrating the impact of public health threats based on autopsy findings. Her research interests include violence and suicide prevention, infectious disease, and substance use.

Amelia Phan, M.A., Medical Anthropology

Amelia is a Master of Public Health candidate concentrating in Epidemiology. She recently earned an M.A. at GSU in Applied Medical Anthropology through which she conducted an ethnography on abortion barriers for women in the region. Currently, she is working as a Graduate Research Assistant with the Alcohol and Sexual Assault Prevention Lab assisting Dr. Ruschelle Leone with the Development of an Alcohol, Cannabis, and Sexual Assault Risk Reduction Program for High-Risk College Women. She has previously worked within community organizations that aid immigrants and refugees, and her work has included assisting victims of domestic violence to attain financial self-sufficiency and legal status. Her research interests include women’s and migrants’ sexual, reproductive, and mental health.

Dominic Parrott: Current Students

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Jessica L. Grom, M.S., Clinical Psychology Program

Jessica L. Grom received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and in International Politics (National Security Option) from The Pennsylvania State University and a Master’s of Science in Psychology from Villanova University. Her Master’s thesis was completed under the direction of Dr. Erica Slotter and investigated whether self-control and attachment anxiety predicted intimate partner violence and displaced aggression. She is currently a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at Georgia State University. Her research interests include identifying risk and protective factors for alcohol-facilitated intimate partner violence.

Kevin Moino, B.A., Clinical Psychology Program

Kevin Moino received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in Psychology with College and Departmental Honors from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2015. As an undergraduate he was awarded the Ronald E. McNair Research Scholars Fellowship, which funded his thesis examining the ways in which race-based stereotypes affect the attribution of sexual orientation in gay men of color. After graduation, he worked as a research associate at the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs, where he managed multiple NIH-funded projects examining the effects of substance abuse on a variety of health outcomes. He is currently a graduate student at Georgia State University in the Clinical Psychology program. He is interested in researching how prejudice and stereotypes manifest into behaviors (including aggression and discrimination) that lead to health disparities in marginalized populations.

Caleigh Shepard, B.A., Clinical Psychology Program

Caleigh Shepard graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rhodes College in 2017. After graduation, Caleigh began work at the University of Arizona in the Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) Lab as part of their trauma research unit. There she researched racial disparities regarding PTSD symptom presentation and treatment efficacy. Caleigh then moved to Boston to join The Fenway Institute to aid in research aimed at improving healthcare and health outcomes for the LGBTQ+ population. She is currently a graduate student at Georgia State University, earning her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. She is interested researching intimate partner violence in sexual minority couples, as well as how traditional gender roles engender violence against women and the LGBTQ+ community.

Brynne A. Velia, B.S., Clinical Psychology Program

Brynne A. Velia graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Stony Brook University in 2017. After graduation, she worked as a research coordinator in Dr. Catharine Fairbairn’s Alcohol Research Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Through running a large-scale alcohol-administration study, she had the opportunity to examine how alcohol’s socially reinforcing effects may contribute to problematic drinking patterns, and how these effects extend to real-world settings. She is currently a graduate student at Georgia State University, earning her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. Brynne is interested in researching how the interplay of societal- (e.g., discrimination, aggression) and individual-level (e.g., internalized homophobia) factors contributes to the development of alcohol use disorder among sexual minorities.

Dennis Reidy: Current Students

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Anne Laterra, MPH, School of Public Health

Anne Laterra is a doctoral student at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health.  She is also, at present, a Senior Technical Advisor for Evaluation and Learning at CARE USA, an international humanitarian and development organization and has more than seven years of experience in the monitoring, evaluation, research, and implementation of sexual and reproductive health programming. She has a particular passion for operationalizing rigorous quasi-experimental research designs with those working and living in complex, resource-limited settings and is a believer in mixed- and participatory evaluation methods that center the rights and experiences of the historically marginalized. Anne is eager to build her research and evaluation toolkit through her doctoral studies and is interested in the development and evaluation of theory-informed and evidence-based interventions to improve adolescent sexual and reproductive health. She holds a master’s degree in Public Health from the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health.  

Bre Edison, MPH, School of Public Health

Bre Edison is pursuing her PhD at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health in the department of Health Promotion and Behavior. As a graduate research assistant under the mentorship of Drs. Dennis Reidy and Katherine Masyn, she primarily works with violence prevention in adolescent populations. Her research interests are in sexual health communication and education specifically in racial/ethnic and sexual and gender minorities for adolescents and young adults. She has previous employment and research experience in clinical trials working as a Parkinson’s Disease research coordinator with the Movement Disorders Neurology department at the University of Pittsburgh. She also received her master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health in 2018, with a concentration in management, intervention, and community practice of infectious diseases. Her undergraduate studies were completed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she majored in Exercise Science and minored in Biology and Medical Anthropology.

Camille Kordas, BS, Nutrition and Dietetics, BA French Studies

Camille is pursuing her Masters of Public Health with a concentration in Health Behavior & Promotion from Georgia State University. She earned bachelor’s degrees in Nutrition & Dietetics and French Studies from Andrews University. As a graduate research assistant for Dr. Dennis Reidy, Camille assists with projects related to sexual violence prevention in adolescent populations. Her research interests include reproductive and sexual health, and sexual violence prevention.

Grace S. Liu, MPH, School of Public Health

Grace Liu is a doctoral student in the Epidemiology program at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health. She has spent much of her career examining the influence of norms and attitudes on individual behavior, public perception of public health issues, and general understanding of and support for prevention efforts. She is particularly interested in identifying and addressing structural and social drivers of violence among LGBTQ+ communities and racial/ethnic minorities. Currently, as an Epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), Grace conducts research on violent deaths among sexual and gender minorities and targeted interpersonal violence motivated by hate and/or prejudice. Grace looks forward to advancing her academic training in epidemiological theories and applied methods to better evaluate community- and societal-level influences of violence and inform norms change approaches to violence prevention and health equity. She holds a Master of Public Health degree in Epidemiology from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Laura Salazar: Current Student

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Nyla Flowers, MPH, School of Public Health

Nyla Flowers is a doctoral student in the Health Promotion and Behavior Department at Georgia State University. She holds an MPH in Behavioral Sciences and Health Education from Rollins School of Public Health. Nyla has research experience in qualitative research focused on underrepresented populations, such as African American women and women at-risk for intimate partner violence in clinical settings. She also has some expertise in health communications at the federal level. Her research interests are in violence prevention, specifically sexual violence and adverse childhood experiences as well as health disparities in underserved minority communities.

Shannon Self-Brown: Current Students

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Elizabeth W. Perry, MPH, School of Public Health 

Elizabeth (Liz) is a doctoral student in the School of Public Health concentrating in Health Promotion and Behavior. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Kennesaw State University and a Master in Public Health from Georgia State University. After graduating from KSU and while completing her MPH, Liz worked as a Sexual Assault Victim Advocate for Day League’s Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program. Liz’s research interests center around child maltreatment prevention, adolescent trauma, and implementation science to research ways to effectively increase the reach of evidence-based programs in low-resourced areas in low- and middle-income countries.  

Manderley Recinos, School of Public Health 

Manderley Recinos is a doctoral student in the School of Public Health with a focus on Health Promotion. She received her Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Psychology from Augusta University. During her masters, she interned at the Institute of Public and Preventive Health where she worked on a project examining the integration of a mobile health app into evidence-based interventions aimed at preventing child maltreatment and treating child maltreatment symptomatology. Manderley’s research interests include prevention programs for child maltreatment, physiological effects of emotional abuse, intergenerational trauma, and treatments for child maltreatment such as TF-CBT.

Katherine Reuben, B.S., School of Public Health

Katherine Reuben received a B.S. in Psychology from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2018. Her undergraduate senior thesis was on trauma and dissociation in autism spectrum disorders. Additionally, she is working on a study related to therapy experiences for adult trauma survivors with complex dissociative disorders. Katherine is interested in researching developmental disability as a potential disparity in risk and treatment of childhood interpersonal violence, dissociation as an outcome of trauma, and commercial sexual exploitation of children. She is currently a graduate student in the Georgia State University Public Health program.

Ashley E. N. Watson, MPH, School of Public Health

Ashley Watson is a Second Century Initiative University Doctoral Fellow in the Health Disparities in Developmental Disabilities Cluster. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from Georgia State University. As an undergraduate student, Ms. Watson became a published Ronald E. McNair Scholar and a member of the Georgia State University Honors College. During her master’s program, her research focused on child outcomes based on parental behavior. Ms. Watson’s current research interests include the identification of risk and protective factors in victims of abuse. She is currently working as a Graduate Research Assistant in the Department of Health Promotion and Behavior in the School of Public Health under the tutelage of Dr. Shannon Self-Brown.

Cynthia Stappenbeck: Current Students

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Brennah Ross, B.S., Clinical/Community Psychology Program

Brennah Ross is currently a doctoral student in Georgia State University’s Clinical and Community Psychology program. She graduated with a B.S. in Economics from The College of New Jersey, and later completed a psychology post-bacc at Villanova University. Prior to graduate school, she worked at Temple University coordinating studies on anxiety treatment including an NIH-funded clinical trial. Brennah is interested in interdisciplinary research that aims to improve psychological outcomes for victims of sexual violence.

Anna Peddle, B.S., Clinical/Community Psychology Program

Anna Peddle is a doctoral student in Georgia State University’s Clinical-Community Psychology program. She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Furman University in 2018. Prior to joining Dr. Cynthia Stappenbeck’s lab at GSU, she worked as a clinical research coordinator at the University of Minnesota on a project investigating subgroups within opioid use disorder. She has previously completed supervised research projects that span the topics of trait-level mindfulness, externalizing behavior and IQ, and social support in addiction. Anna has also worked in inpatient psychiatric settings with adolescents and adults with domestic and sexual violence histories, substance use disorders, and self-harm behaviors. At GSU, Anna is interested in researching novel and evidence-based interventions for substance-abusing populations and victims of domestic and sexual violence.

Kevin Swartout: Current Students

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Kamilla Bonnesen, Community Psychology and Public Health dual degree program

Kamilla is a doctoral students in the Community and Public Health Program in the Division of Epidemiology. She received her honours B.Sc in the Psychology from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Her research interests include violence against women prevention and cross-cultural initiatives to target violence prevention and intervention collaboratively. Additionally, she is also interested in sociopolitical barriers to effective sexual violence prevention and intervention.

Daniel J. Lanni, M.S., Clincial/Community Psychology

Daniel Lanni received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Science at Oakland University in Psychology in 2016 and 2019, respectively. Currently, Daniel is a doctoral student in Georgia State University’s Clinical and Community Psychology program. He is interested in the relationship between alcohol use, emotion regulation, motivations, attitudes, and sexual assault perpetration. Additionally, he is also interested in social norm-based interventions as a means to reduce sexual violence.

Yamini Patel, B.S., Community Psychology and Public Health Program

Yamini Patel is a doctoral student in the Community and Public Health program. Yamini graduated from Georgia State University in 2018 with a B.S. in Psychology, and her research interests include community level approaches to violence against women intervention and prevention. Specifically, Yamini is interested in community-based programs that target gender biases, power imbalances, and sexual violence perpetration.

Tehnyat Sohail, B.S., Public Health—Community Psychology dual program

Tehnyat Sohail is a doctoral student in the Public Health and Community Psychology dual-degree program with a concentration in Health Promotion and Behavior at Georgia State University. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Georgia State University in 2020. After graduation, she worked as a research assistant under the supervision of Dr. Cari Jo Clark at Emory University, studying gender-based violence in low-resource settings to empower individuals to adopt healthy behaviors through risk-reduction practices and women’s and girls’ empowerment. Additionally, she worked on Dr. Kevin Swartout’s Violence Against Women Prevention Team at Georgia State University, studying sexual health literacy of refugee populations in Atlanta and dating violence prevention among college students. Tehnyat’s research interests aim to investigate sexual violence prevention in marginalized communities in low-resource settings. Specifically, she is interested to see if violence perpetration manifests differently in these communities based on sociocultural factors. She is also interested in learning more about how to effectively disseminate and implement research to prevent violence at a local and global level.

Olivia Westemeier, B.S., Psychology

Olivia Westemeier is in the Clinical-Community Psychology PhD program. She received her Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a minor in Rhetoric from the University of Iowa in 2021. At Iowa, she assisted in developing protective behavioral strategies to reduce sexually aggressive behavior; and worked with Iowa’s Anti-Violence Coalition to collaborate on university policy, system response, and prevention programming for campus sexual violence. Her primary topics of interest are how event-level and psychological mechanisms act as risk or protective factors for sexually aggressive behavior and integrates various theories and methods within clinical, social, and cognitive psychology. She is also interested in how bridging basic-and applied-level acquaintance-initiated sexual assault research can inform sexual perpetration prevention programming.

Rebecca Wilson, M.A., Community Psychology Program

Rebecca Wilson is a doctoral student in the Community Psychology program at Georgia State University. Rebecca graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Drama/Theatre from the University of Montana. She toured with multiple Reparatory Theatre companies performing in plays like My Children, My Africa, Waiting For Godot, and The Laramie Project. Her tour with My Children, My Africa included traveling to underserved communities and Native American reservations discussing community issues of social justice, oppression, and response and prevention strategies. She moved to Chicago where she completed her Master of Arts in counseling and rehabilitation psychology. She worked at Cook County Jail under the direction of Dr. Doreen Salina and Dr. Nancy Soros as a part of the Cook County Sheriff’s Justice Services researching violence against women prevention strategies as well as providing individual and group mental health assessment and treatment. She continued to work for Dr. Leonard Jason at DePaul’s Center for Community Psychology examining violence prevention strategies for African American youth and barriers to recovery for women in the criminal justice system. Rebecca’s research interests include: Examining social norms supporting sexual violence, public health and economic policy approaches to violence prevention, as well as varieties of patriarchy and violence against women. Additionally, she is interested in insurgent group behavior, how social movements become violent, the impact of conflict on women, and the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.

Daniel Whitaker: Current Students

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Olivia Randall-Kosich, B.S., M.H.A., School of Public Health

Olivia Randall-Kosich is a doctoral student and Second Century Initiative (2CI) Fellow in the School of Public Health. Prior to attending Georgia State University, Olivia earned a B.S. in Psychology and a Masters in Health Administration (M.H.A.) from the University of Central Florida (UCF). Her research interests center around substance use disorder (SUD) prevalence, treatment, and policy, especially regarding access to medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder. As a research assistant for the National SafeCare Training and Research Center, Olivia is interested in the intersection between parental substance use and child maltreatment.

Amanda Norris, B.A., Criminal Justice and Sociology

Amanda Norris is a master student in the School of Public Health with a concentration in Health Promotion and Behavior at Georgia State University. Before attending Georgia State University, Amanda earned her B.A. in both Criminal Justice and Sociology from the University of Georgia. Due to the completion of an undergraduate internship in the Division of Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control, her passion for violence prevention, and largely public health, blossomed. Amanda’s research and career interests include intimate partner violence, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, health equity, and social determinants of health.