Investigators

Kathryn Cullen, M.D. 

Dr. Cullen (she/her) is an Associate Professor and Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis. She received a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Chicago. She completed medical school, residency training, and child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship training at the University of Minnesota. She also completed a research training fellowship in Neurobehavioral Development at the University of Minnesota. She has been on the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry since 2008. Dr. Cullen's research focuses on adolescent depression and related problems such as self-injury.

Bonnie Klimes-Dougan, Ph.D, LP

Dr. Klimes-Dougan is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Minnesota. She received a bachelor of science from Loma Linda University. She completed doctoral training in clinical psychology at Florida State University, completed her internship at Duke University and postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Mental Health. She was a faculty at the Catholic University of America before being hired by the University of Minnesota in 2004. Dr. Klimes-Dougan's research focuses on the stress system, considering risk and protective factors for distress, depression and despair in adolescents. 

Co-Investigators

Kristina Reigstad, PsyD, LP

Dr. Reigstad is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, at the University of Minnesota Medical School. She completed her doctoral degree at the University of St. Thomas, and completed her postdoctoral fellowship in clinical psychology and research in the Child and Adolescent Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program at the University of Minnesota Medical School. She has been on the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry since 2014. Dr. Reigstad’s research interests include the development and implementation of effective treatments for adolescent depression, maternal mental health and promoting positive parenting practices.

Carolyn Lasch 

Carolyn (she/her/hers) is a Doctoral Dissertation fellow and graduate student in the Developmental Psychopathology and Clinical Science program at UMN. She is interested in the role of caregivers in the development of social attention and cognition, especially in families at risk for anxiety and living in high-adversity contexts. Her work also focused on how early anxiety is reflected in brain development, and how this may vary in different diagnostic groups (e.g., children with ASD). Prior to graduate school, she worked at UMN as a project coordinator primarily focused on neuroimaging, behavioral, and eye-tracking assessments. She received her B.A. in Psychology from Scripps College in 2015 and her M.A. in Child Development from UMN in 2019.

Zeynep Basgoze

Zeynep (she/her/hers) is a postdoctoral associate, working under the supervision of Dr. Kathryn Cullen & Dr. Bonnie Klimes-Dougan in the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department at the University of Minnesota Medical School. She received her BA degree from the Philosophy Department at the Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey. She completed her MSc and PhD in the Cognitive Sciences Department at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Dr. Emily Cooper in the Psychological and Brain Sciences Department at Dartmouth College, NH, USA and in the Optometry School at the University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Dr. Başgöze’s research focuses on the changes in the emotional and attentional mechanisms in the brain related to Major Depression Disorder, brain plasticity, visual adaptation, and binocular vision. She is specialized in designing and analyzing both fMRI and psychophysical experiments.

Andrea Wiglesworth

Andrea is a graduate student in the Clinical Science and Psychopathology Research Doctoral Program. She is interested in the relationship between forms of stress (e.g. minority stress in Native American populations, chronic stressors such as poverty, and childhood maltreatment) and suicidal thoughts and behaviors in childhood and adolescence. She examines neurobiological and psychophysiological mechanisms that may be related to these constructs.

Michelle Thai

I am currently a graduate student in the Clinical Science and Psychopathology Research Program program. My interests focus on understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying mood and anxiety disorders. I am particularly interested in the use of neuromodulation as a tool to study and treat affective disorders.

Tori Papke

Tori (she/hers) a graduate student in the Clinical Science and Psychopathology Research Doctoral Program. She started in the lab as an undergraduate volunteer in 2019 and has since graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.S. in 2021 and worked as a project coordinator for the NAC Study. She is particularly interested in studying stress in relation to development and psychopathological outcomes, such as suicidality and self-harm. 

Kate Carosella

Kate (she/her/hers) is a graduate student in the Clinical Science and Psychopathology Research Doctoral Program. She graduated with a Bachelors of Science from Johns Hopkins University. She is interested in understanding the neural basis of maladaptive responses to stress such as self-injury and suicide. She hopes to elucidate how evolutionarily adaptive processes such as threat processing can go awry on the system neuroscience level and result in psychopathology. She loves baking, swimming, and cuddling her dog, Mozzarella!

Hopewell Hodges

I am a PhD student in clinical and developmental psychology at the Institute for Child Development, after spending my BA and masters degree focusing on post-violence literature and collective resilience practices. In the long term, I hope to partner with communities of diverse cultural backgrounds to design more effective and culturally appropriate trauma treatments that rely on locally effective resilience mechanisms. In addition to conducting assessments in the RAD Lab, I am fortunate to receive mentorship from Dr. Gail Ferguson and Dr. Ann Masten. 

Michaelle DiMaggio-Potter

Michaelle DiMaggio-Potter (she/her) is a MIND Scholar in the RAD Lab. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Columbia University, where she researched music and memory in Columbia’s Developmental Affective Neuroscience Lab (DAN Lab). As an undergraduate, she also performed in plays, musicals, and ballroom competitions. She is interested in maladaptive cognition and behavior, specifically emotional dysregulation and self-harm, and desires to improve treatment methods for adolescents who suffer from mood and personality disorders. 

Aurora Green

Aurora (she/her) is the study coordinator for the Sexual and Gender Minority studies. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in printmaking and a theatre minor from The University of Iowa in 2017. Since graduation she has worked at two different hospitals in inpatient adolescent psychiatry and coaches de-escalation trainings for the Barbara Schneider Foundation. Her research interests include adolescent depression and non-suicidal self-injury, minority stress, adolescent psychotherapeutic interventions, and eating disorders. Clinical interests include developing DBT-based programming for inpatient milieus. She hopes to begin pursuing a PhD in Clinical Child Psychology in the fall of 2023. In her free time she enjoys rock climbing, kayaking, cooking, and brewing her own kombucha.

Zay Hayee

"I'm Zay (she/her), a third year undergrad in the Psychology program with a minor in Spanish. My main interest areas in Psychology are adolescent/developmental, mood and anxiety disorders (from a clinical and research perspective), and research procedures and ethics. I'm also interested in raising awareness about mental health conditions and struggles within the SouthAsian community. Down the line, I would like to go to grad school and work in research and academia. Outside of school, work, and lab, I enjoy reading, cooking, watching TV shows, and hiking.

Salah Mirza

Hi, I’m Salahudeen (Salah) Mirza, and I’m an undergraduate studying child development with a minor in cellular and molecular neuroscience.  My interest has been in understanding the developmental pathways to suicide and other self-injurious thoughts and behaviours.  This interest has spanned multiple levels of analysis including imaging of the brain’s structure and function, salivary cortisol assay, gene expression in animal models of mood disorder, and genetic and epigenetic variation in studies of post mortem brain tissue of suicide decedents.  I am especially interested in improving our ability to predict youth suicide attempt/death risk using multiple methods.  Another interest of mine is the transmission of suicidal behaviour and affective disorder across generations.  Within the lab, the main datasets I have worked with are BRIDGES and ABCD (NIH), both of which are longitudinal cohorts.  My hope is that some of the pathways and risk/protective factors that we identify prove helpful in identifying those at high risk for suicide, with the possibility of aiding in targeted interventions.  I’m really grateful to be working as part of such a caring and supportive team.

Jordan Frederiksen

In RAD lab, my current activities involve primarily data entry, organization, and triers. My data entry primarily involved physical into digital versions of the data collected over the years. Over the spring and early summer semester, I helped a grad student with her systematic review of early life stress. I'm interested in personality disorders as I feel as it's a neglected and stigmatized area in psychology/psychiatry. In my Intro to Abnormal Psychology class with Dr. Klimes-Dougan, the textbook Abnormal Psychology by Hooley, Nock & Butcher stated that many with borderline personality disorder are rejected by therapists and clinical psychologists due to their nature. This shouldn't be the case. Long-term, I intend to start with an MD and work towards a specialty in psychiatry. These plans may change as I want to do a mixture of clinical psychology and psychiatry, as I want to blend the fields in terms of their treatments.

Aly Hayashi

Hi, my name is Aly and I am a junior majoring in Neuroscience and Japanese on the pre-med track. I am very interested in anxiety and depression and want to learn more about their neurobiological processes. In addition, I'm interested in learning how to predict and use preventative measures in young children to lessen the probability of depression and anxiety. I intend on pursuing medical school and possibly an MD/PhD.

Josie Friedman

Hi! I'm Josie (she/her), a junior majoring in human physiology and psychology. I joined the RAD Lab due to my interest in improving mental health outcomes for adolescents. I look forward to learning more about neuroscience and its relation to anxiety and mood disorders. In the future, I hope to pursue a career that combines use of psychosocial skills with knowledge of health, illness, and healing. Outside of school and my work with the lab, I enjoy baking, thrifting, and trying new restaurants.  

Choolwe Haamankuli

Hello, my name is Choolwe (he/him/his) and I’m a fourth year student studying psychology on a pre-med track. This will be my first semester working in the lab. As someone who is interested in being a psychiatrist one day, I couldn’t be more excited to further explore my interest in preventative strategies for adolescent depression through the work I’ll be doing in this lab. I also can’t wait for the RAD Lab to be an opportunity to dive deeper into the greater work done within research. In my free time, I enjoy spending time with friends and watching sports.

Sam Cesafsky

Hi, my name is Sam (he/him) and I'm a senior majoring in psychology with a minor in biology in the College of Liberal Arts. After taking Dr. Klimes-Dougan's abnormal psychology class as a junior and preparing for my research practicum, I joined the RAD Lab because of my interests in studying anxiety disorders in adolescents and the lab's focus on developmental psychology and role of brain structure and function in psychological disorders. In my time in the lab, I have become increasingly interested in studying the functions of non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents. My future plans involve graduate school in the health sciences.

Anya Pavlova

My name is Anya (she/her) and I am a volunteer in the lab, primarily working as the study coordinator for the Becoming Artists study. I am a junior majoring in biology and psychology, and I plan on going to medical school after college. I joined the RAD lab because I have an interest in improving mental health outcomes, and I am considering going into psychiatry in the future, so this is a great place to further explore neurobiological mechanisms in adolescents as well as treatment options for various mood disorders. Outside of school, I love to hike, cook and travel!

Mirnesa Halilovic

My name is Mirnesa and my pronouns are she/her. I am a fourth-year Psychology major, and also majoring in Political Science and Global Studies, with a minor in Arabic. My interest on the topic of self-harm and anxiety/depression in adolescents has always been growing. I joined the RAD lab to work on my senior thesis and answer a few questions about the topic. Outside of the lab, I love to read and cook.

Olivia Costa

My name is Olivia (she/her) and I am a third year student majoring in Psychology and minoring in Neuroscience and Spanish. After graduation, I plan to pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology, and my research interests center on identifying approaches to improve the mental health of adolescents with intersectional identities (e.g. LGBTQIA+ and Latine). As part of RADLab I worked on the Creativity Camp Study project, which was a great opportunity to learn how to run a research study and analyze data. The RADLab provided me with research experience relevant to my interests and fueled my curiosity in the study of human behavior.

Huda Ahmed

Hi, I'm Huda and I use she/her pronouns. I am a third-year international student majoring in Psychology, with the intention of pursuing a PhD in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis on research. I joined the RAD Lab as a volunteer because of my interest in the effectiveness of various clinical interventions on adolescent anxiety and depression. Some of my hobbies include cooking, reading and playing the electric guitar.

Rachel Kirch-Whitmore

Hi, my name is Rachel (she/her) and I’m a senior majoring in psychology with a minor in sociology of law.  After graduation, I plan on pursuing a MA in counseling psychology with a focus on adolescent mental health.  I joined the RAD lab due to my interests in adolescent mental health diagnoses and the effects of their comorbidity during this stage of life. The RAD lab has given me the opportunity to gain hands-on experience working in research and with participants virtually which I will be able to transfer to my future areas of study and career path.  Outside of the lab and school, I enjoy rock climbing, painting, and watching live music.

Jordan Arntz

"Hello! I am Jordan (she/her/hers), a fourth year undergraduate pre-med student studying psychology. I am applying to medical school next year and have a long-term goal of becoming a pediatric psychiatrist. I am passionate about intersectional and interprofessional care as well as holistic health in mental health treatment. I am interested in studying various treatments for depression and anxiety disorders including OCD. The more options that are available to providers, the more individualized healthcare and treatment can become! I am also passionate about prevention care for mental health, including public health measures, education surrounding mental health, and suicide prevention efforts. In my spare time, I love to watercolor paint, bake, spend time with my friends, and hike!"