Postdoctoral Research Fellow
New York State Psychiatric Institute
My long-term career goal is to become an independently funded clinical researcher developing, studying, and implementing novel, effective and scalable treatments for individuals with substance use disorders (SUD). My academic, clinical and research training have provided me with an excellent background in the delivery of empirically supported psychotherapies, examinations of pharmacotherapy and behavioral pharmacology in human laboratory paradigms, and more recently, the conduct of clinical trials. After completing my bachelor's degree, I studied novel pharmacotherapies for opioid use disorder (OUD) in human laboratory models under the mentorship of Dr. Sandra Comer. Through this position, I quickly recognized a penchant for research as well as applied clinical intervention, which led me to pursue my PhD in clinical psychology at the University at Albany, SUNY. While pursuing my PhD, I learned to deliver empirically supported behavioral therapies, continued research on the etiology and maintenance of SUD, and gained valuable experience with statistics, research design, teaching, and mentorship. During my graduate training, I published 3 first-author publications examining the risks and correlates of cannabis use disorder and co-authored 13 additional peer-reviewed articles. After completing my predoctoral clinical internship at Stony Brook University, I knew I wanted to return to an academic institution that would enable rich and varied training in the development and implementation of novel treatments for SUD. I therefore pursued training in the T32 postdoctoral fellowship in the division on SUD at the NY State Psychiatric Institute/Columbia University Irving Medical Center and began the fellowship August 2020.
