People

Principal Investigator, Lisa Gatzke-Kopp, Ph.D.

Lisa is a Professor of Human Development and Family Studies. She is interested in the developmental neuroscience of psychopathology, with a particular focus on how children develop behavior problems such as aggression, hyperactivity, and substance abuse. Research has shown that such problems likely evolve when innate vulnerability interacts with environmental stressors. Understanding the neurobiological dysfunction that contributes to this vulnerability informs the identification of experiential and environmental factors that exacerbate or ameliorate risk. Identification of these factors positions researchers, and eventually policy makers, to implement changes in the environment that may alter these trajectories and improve developmental outcomes.
Lisa's faculty webpage.

Postdoctoral Researchers

Yolanda Murphy, Ph.D.
Yolanda is a post-doc in Human Development and Family Studies. She is interested in how environmental and individual characteristics interact to impact child mental health development over time. She is also interested in applying this information to shape policy and program initiatives for child and family well-being.

Ty Lees, Ph.D.
Ty is a Postdoctoral Scholar in Human Development and Family Studies. His primary research interests lie at the intersection of cognition and psychopathology, and how these relationships are moderated, and reflected in electrophysiological measures. He also interested in the predictive and/or diagnostic capability of electrophysiological methods for disease, development, and performance; with a particular focus in multi-modal strategies.

Current Graduate Students

Patrick Ryan, M.S.
Patrick is a fifth-year graduate student in the Human Development and Family Studies program. He is primarily interested in the neurobiological underpinnings of self regulation. His research focuses on individual differences in the dynamics of parasympathetic tone in conditions of stress as measured through RSA.

Xutong Zhang, M.S.
Xutong is a fourth-year graduate student in Human Development and Family Studies. She is interested in the roles of stress and parental self-regulation in shaping parenting behaviors and the risk for child abuse and neglect. She is also interested in how children's self-regulation develops in the context of parent-child interaction, particularly the underlying psychophysiological mechanisms.

Cassidy Fry
Cassidy is a second-year graduate student in Human Development and Family Studies. She is interested in the emergence of internalizing psychopathology in adolescents.

Sarah Terrell
Sarah is a first year graduate student in the Human Development and Family Studies program. She is interested in neurobiological processes that contribute to emotion regulation and psychopathology outcomes, particularly antisocial behavior and aggression. She is also interested in how individual differences may influence the effectiveness of treatment for antisocial behavior, how interventions can be catered based on these individual differences, and the policy implications of this research for criminal justice reform.
Curriculum Vitae

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Ruth Warren
Ruthie is a senior from Erie, PA, majoring in Biobehavioral Health and minoring in Neuroscience and Biology. She intends to attend Medical School and hopefully specialize in neurology to work with patients ranging from neurodegenerative disorders to forms of speech and language disorders. She has been working in the Development of Self-Regulation Project and the Child Brain Development Lab.

Emma Brown
Emma is a senior at Penn State University, majoring in Rehabilitation and Human Services and minoring in Kinesiology. After graduating, Emma wishes to attend occupational therapy school. She is interested in working with children with autism and is excited for what the future holds!

Meghan Seitz
Meghan is a junior at Penn State who is majoring in Psychology and minoring in Human Development and Family Studies. She intends to go to graduate school and then get licensed in Psychology. She is most interested in working with children in a therapy setting.

Natalie Cappelli
Natalie is a Senior at Penn State University, majoring in Biology and is a student in the Schreyer Honors College, pursuing an Honors Degree in Human Development and Family Studies. Natalie plans to attend Medical School in order to reach her goals of becoming a physician and building her career around bettering the lives of others. She is currently completing her Honors Thesis and is interested in studying the regulation of emotion in school-aged children.

Graduate Alumni

Róisín White completed her PhD in Human Development and Family Studies in 2019. Her research focused on how biological factors (genetic, physiological, neurological) interact with environmental factors (particularly early life stress) to influence decision-making and behavior later in development. She is also interested in investigating how individual differences in reward processing, cost estimation and risk assessment contribute to the development of both internalizing and substance use disorders. Róisín is currently a Biostatistician at Novartis, Ireland.

Kristine Creavey completed her PhD in Human Development and Family Studies in 2018. Her research focused on the development of social, emotional, and behavioral well-being in children living in adverse environments. She is particularly interested in how the parent-child relationship and parenting practices within an environment of risk contribute to child development. She is also concerned with how these family measures interact with individual child physiological measures to contribute to healthy developmental outcomes in children. Kristine is currently a Research and Evaluation Specialist with the Pennsylvania Child Welfare Resource Center, University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work.

Cynthia Willner completed her PhD in the Human Development and Family Studies department in 2016. Her research focused on understanding how individual differences in neurophysiological functioning influence children’s developing self-regulation and emotional-behavioral symptoms. Cindy is currently an Associate Research Scientist at the Yale Child Study Center,

Dave DuPuis completed his PhD in Neuroscience in 2013. His dissertation examined the decomposition of the event-related negativity (ERN) potential into power and frequency components to examine how neural systems involved in error processing changed across development in children ages 5-10. He is currently Manager of Data Science at HBO.

Christine Fortunato completed her PhD in Human Development and Family Studies in 2012. Upon graduating she complete a policy fellowship through the Society of Research in Child Development. She is currently working as a Social Science Research Analyst at the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children & Families.

Undergraduate Research Assistant Alumni

Kaley Moyer
Kaley graduated in 2016 as a Pre-Medicine major with a minor in Human Development and Family Studies. Kaley is currently working as a research assistant at Penn State Hershey. Her future plans include attending medical school in 2017, as she aspires to one day become a neonatologist.

Kathryn Adams
Katie graduated in 2016 with a major in Psychology. She is currently pursuing her PhD at Georgetown University.

Sarah Foster
Sarah graduated in 2017, majoring in Human Development and Family Studies and minoring in Psychology. She is currently pursuing her Master of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA.

Jada Mapp
Jada graduated in 2018 with a Biology major and a minor in Psychology. Jada wishes to attend medical school and specialize in Child/Adolescent Psychiatry.