Graduate Students

Dr. V and the grad students convey the basic emotions from Inside Out. Hopefully you can guess who is conveying each feeling? (Note: emotions selected do not represent predominant feeling of that person.)

Broadly, I’m interested in exploring how transdiagnostic risk factors influence internalizing psychopathology. I plan to utilize momentary assessment to investigate these relationships dynamically, with the goal of understanding how certain contextual features (such as social setting or culture) influence self-regulation. Ultimately, I hope for my work to inform efforts to identify and assist those at high risk for developing internalizing disorders.

I am on internship in 2025-2026 at the Montana VA Health Care System in Fort Harrison, MT

I am currently a 1^st year student in the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program. From emotional control to desire intolerance and everything in between, my research interests really run the gamut. I am a huge statistics nerd, and I enjoy using Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) to model behaviors in daily life. Right now, my interest is in the way that we measure affect in daily life.

I am currently exploring how emotional numbness may present as a unique emotional state or signify emotion dysfunction that impairs emotion generation and regulation abilities. I hope that my work provides further understanding of emotional numbness and its implications towards psychopathology. Clinically, I am interested in personality pathology, as well as complex presentations of emotion dysfunction, interpersonal functioning, and maladaptive emotional and cognitive beliefs.

I am currently a 4th year student in the Clinical Psychology doctoral program. I am broadly interested in how emotions can both facilitate and get in the way of people’s long-term goals. My current research focus is looking at how types of social support can affect momentary distress tolerance, as well as examining motivators of emotional sharing versus emotional self-isolation. I am particularly enthusiastic about clinical work, including providing evidence-based psychotherapy for complex cases.

I am an Experimental PhD student with a social psychology focus, and also a current faculty member in the Department of Educational Leadership. My research sits at the intersection of psychology and education. For the past several years, my work has focused on the relational, wellness related aspects of schooling with a particular interest in how incivility manifests in schools and the relational challenges it presents for students, families, educators, and community members. My desire to better understand incivility prompted me to pursue a degree in Experimental Psychology. My current work explores undeservingness. Specifically, I am interested in better understanding people’s emotion-based responses to undeserved outcomes (e.g., particularly when a positive action results in a negative outcome) and the relational consequences of these responses.

I am largely interested in individual, environmental, and contextual factors that drive an individual to engage in dysregulated behaviors. Specifically, I am interested in exploring mechanisms that contribute to engagement in risk-taking behaviors (e.g., exaggerated alcohol consumption). My research thus far has explored individual and environmental correlates of risky drinking behaviors. 

I am on internship from 2025-2026 at the Northeastern Oklahoma Psychology Internship at Cherokee Nation, OK.

I joined the TEMPT lab after my prior advisor left the U of A, and so my research focus is a bit different. I am have research interests in health psychology and behavioral sleep medicine. My work examines the biopsychosocial correlates of sleep and health, with a focus on the underlying mechanisms at the intersection between insomnia, depression, stress, inflammation, and chronic illness. My dissertation is focused on understanding the bidirectional associations between glucose metabolism and sleep quality. I am also interested in the use of sleep as an emotion regulation strategy.

I am on internship (2025-2026) at the Missouri Health Sciences Psychology Consortium in Columbia, MO

Graduate Student Alumn

• • Danielle Higuera, Ph.D.
  • Kayce Hyde Brott, Ph.D.
  • Garrett Pollert, Ph.D.
  • Jennifer Shaver, Ph.D.
  • Regina Schreiber, Ph.D.
  • Kayla Skinner, Ph.D.
  • Elise Warner, Ph.D.
  • Melissa Zielinski, Ph.D.