Meet our Team

Jessilyn is a sixth year clinical psychology PhD student in Dr. Gerstein’s FACT Lab. She is currently completing her predoctoral clinical internship at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in the traumatic stress track. Her current research interests center around perinatal mental health, and generally how maternal stress and trauma influence parenting outcomes. Her master’s thesis focused on the determinants of parenting outcomes within a high-risk low SES sample. Her specialty paper focused on the transdiagnostic factors present across postpartum psychopathology, and her dissertation examines the dimensionality of postpartum psychopathology, identifying shared and unique variance among postpartum diagnoses.

Mady is a fourth year Clinical Psychology graduate student in the FACT Lab. She graduated with a BS in Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh in 2020. As an undergraduate and, following graduation, a research assistant, Mady worked under Dr. Jana Iverson at the Infant Communication Lab studying developmental cascades across the first three years of life. Her current research interests include exploring the relationships between parenting behaviors, the parent-child relationship, and child outcomes. Mady’s thesis examined associations between parent perceptions of the parent-child relationship and other factors such as parenting stress and child behavior problems.

Parker is a third year Clinical Psychology graduate student in the FACT Lab. She graduated in 2022 with a BS in Clinical Psychology and Community Health from Tufts University. As an undergraduate and after graduation, Parker worked at Massachusetts General Hospital in the Center for Women’s Mental Health studying psychiatric medication use during pregnancy, perinatal suicidality, and novel interventions for postpartum psychopathology. She is particularly interested in perinatal mental health and interventions for perinatal psychopathology within high-risk samples. 

Olivia is a second year Clinical Psychology PhD student in the FACT Lab. She earned her BS in Psychology from the University of West Florida in 2023. As a first-generation college student, Olivia conducted research in the UWF Children’s Self-Regulation Lab under the mentorship of Dr. Kimberly Day and collaborated with Northwestern University’s Center for Childhood Resilience. Following graduation, she worked as a lab manager under Dr. Lea Dougherty in the Big Emotions Across Development Lab at the University of Maryland, College Park. Broadly, Olivia is interested in parent-child interactions during early childhood, particularly within the context of familial socioeconomic disadvantage and related risk factors. She is especially interested in investigating how various parental emotion socialization strategies may support the development of foundational socioemotional skills in young children.

Descriptionlizabeth is a second-year Clinical Psychology graduate student in the FACT Lab. She graduated from Hamilton College in 2023 with a BA in Psychology. Elizabeth has conducted research as part of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute Department of Supportive Oncology, where she developed a passion for caregiver support and psychopathology. Her current research interests include maternal health outcomes, parent-child interactions among medically high-risk populations, and interventions to promote psychosocial support for caregivers and families in healthcare settings. goes here