Lab Members

DIRECTOR

Jutta Joormann is a Professor in the Department of Psychology. She received her doctoral degree from the Free University of Berlin and joined the Yale Psychology Department in 2014 after working at Stanford University, the University of Miami and Northwestern University. Her main areas of interest include the identification of cognitive risk factors for depression, research on the comorbidity of anxiety and depression, and research on social anxiety disorder. Her current work examines attention and memory processes in depression and how these are linked to rumination and emotion dysregulation. In her work, she integrates a multitude of measures, including cognitive tasks, psychophysiological measures of stress reactivity and regulation, eye tracking, neuroendocrine assessments, genotying, and brain imaging. She is currently an Associate Editor of Journal of Abnormal Psychology and of the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology.

E-mail: jutta.joormann@yale.edu

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GRADUATE STUDENTS

Ashleigh Rutherford is a fifth-year PhD student in clinical psychology. She graduated from Amherst College in 2016 with an honors degree in Psychology and English. Before arriving at Yale, Ashleigh worked under the supervision of Dr. Diego Pizzagalli at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School multi-modally studying differential reward processing abnormalities that contribute to unipolar and bipolar depression. Her research currently focuses on cognitive mechanisms—particularly working memory—that may contribute to anhedonia in major depression.

E-mail: ashleigh.rutherford@yale.edu

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Wisteria Deng is a third-year PhD student in clinical psychology. As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, she studied the neural correlates of emotional processing under the supervision of Dr. Patricia Deldin and Dr. Ivy Tso. After graduating in 2018, she spent two years working under Dr. Daphne Holt at the Mass General Hospital, where she studied the altered fear mechanisms in people with persecutory beliefs and helped develop mindfulness-based interventions for at-risk college students. Wisteria’s research focuses on examining the neurobiological and cognitive mechanisms shared between psychosis and affective illnesses, especially at the at-risk stage. She hopes to better understand the neural markers of transdiagnostic risk and resilience, so as to facilitate early detection and intervention for young adults.

E-mail: wisteria.deng@yale.edu 

Jessica (Jessie) Duda is a second-year PhD student in clinical psychology. She obtained her B.A. from Tufts University in 2015 with dual degrees in Economics and International Relations. After graduating, she worked for several years in the financial services industry before launching her psychology research career. Prior to joining Yale, Jessie worked with Dr. Diego Pizzagalli at the Laboratory for Affective and Translational Neuroscience at McLean Hospital, where she investigated the neural correlates of stress reactivity in major depression. She is interested in the cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms that contribute to maladaptive social beliefs and behavior in psychiatric illness, with an emphasis on trauma- and stress-exposed populations. In her spare time, Jessie enjoys playing the fiddle and hiking in the New England woods.

Email: jessica.duda@yale.edu 

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VISITING GRADUATE STUDENTS AND RESEARCH ASSISTANTS
	Nicola Hohensee is a visiting scholar in the ARC lab and a current PhD student from the University of Muenster, Germany. Her research focuses on emotional and cognitive processes that contribute to the development, maintenance, and reduction of mental disorders, especially emotional clarity, emotion regulation strategies, and cognitive biases. She obtained her B. Sc. in Psychology from the Humboldt University Berlin in 2016 and her M. Sc. in Clinical Psychology and Experimental Psychopathology from the University of Muenster in 2018. Since 2022 she is a licensed cognitive behavioral therapist in Germany. In her spare time, Nicola enjoys traveling, hiking, dancing, and drinking coffee in cozy places.
	Marcia Questel is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) with a master’s degree in special education (concentration – autism) and graduate certificate in Applied Behavior Analysis. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in developmental psychology with a focus on developmental disorders, where her passion for researching executive functioning (EF) and Theory of Mind (ToM) began. Marcia works in private practice, providing consultation to families and faculty. She is the Content Editor for the publication Science in Autism Treatment and the Externship Co-Coordinator for the Association for Science in Autism Treatment. She is researching access and effectiveness of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the ARC lab, she is researching emotions and relationships among teenagers and their parents under Dr. Reuma Gadassi-Polack. Marcia also enjoys research that explores the relationship between EF and emotion regulation. CV
	Adam Zhang is an undergraduate senior studying Cognitive Science in Yale College. He has been working with ARC lab for over two years under the guidance of Drs. Reuma Gadassi-Polack and Hadas Benisty. His current research is centered on harnessing machine learning techniques to model the associations between adolescents’ daily social interactions and their depressive symptoms. In the future, Adam plans to go to medical school and become a physician. Some of his hobbies include hanging out late at night with friends, playing music, and cooking.
	Rhayna Poulin is an undergraduate sophomore in Yale College studying Psychology on the Neuroscience track. She currently works with Bailey Holt-Gosselin  to try to elucidate neurobiological risk and resilience factors for depression using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. Rhayna also works with Dr. Sarah Lowe in the Trauma and Mental Health Lab at the Yale School of Public Health on several projects regarding gender discrimination and mental health, intergenerational trauma, and mental health outcomes in traumatized populations. After college, Rhayna plans to obtain her PhD in clinical psychology. Outside of research, she writes for the Yale Undergraduate Admissions office and serves as an executive board member of the Yale Dramatic Association.
	Stephen Carrabino is an undergraduate senior in Yale College double majoring in Psychology and Political Science, and studying in the Yale Education Studies Scholars Program. I have been working in the ARC lab as a RA since the end of my first year at Yale (early 2020) and I am specifically interested in research around mood disorders. My career goals include completing a PhD in Clinical Psychology and working as a psychotherapist or teaching Psychology to college-level students. My hobbies outside of the academic context include writing music, playing music, and running.
	Jiatong (Tony) Li is an undergraduate junior majoring in Psychology and Economics in Yale College. His research interests include prodromal symptoms, cognitive/affective biases, as well as fMRI visualization. As a career, Tony seeks to conduct intensive research and further pursue a PhD. Some of his hobbies include horseback riding, golf, and tennis.
	Xinyu Zhang is an undergraduate senior in the life sciences with a focus in neuroscience at Yale College. Her current research at ARC Lab focuses on fMRI imaging of Bias Against Disconfirmatory Evidence (BADE) tasks among participants. Xinyu’s interest in neuroscience and psychology initiated from her involvement in competitions. Xinyu plans to take a career in research and would like to continue her interests in her PhD studies. In her free time, Xinyu likes watching Korean drama and doing sports.
	Qingyang Ma is an undergraduate junior studying as a visiting student at Yale College. She is pursuing her B.A. at The University of Hong Kong with a double major in Psychology and Art History. With strong enthusiasm for clinical and developmental psychology, she previously worked as an RA in the HKU Sleep Research Clinic under Dr. Shirley Li and the UBC Infant Studies Centre under Dr. Janet F. Werker. Currently, she works with Jessie Duda in the ARC Lab on various mood disorders with a focus on data analyses and fMRI imaging. Her research interests lie in the interactions between emotional disturbances, personality, and adverse childhood experiences. She plans to pursue a PhD in clinical psychology and has a special interest in art therapy. In her spare time, Qingyang enjoys outdoor activities, visual arts, and French literature.
	Yutong (Tina) Zhu obtained her B.S. from Trinity College in 2021 with dual degrees in Psychology and Educational Studies. Before joining the ARC lab, Yutong worked as a clinical research coordinator with Dr. Deepak D’Souza at the Schizophrenia Neuropharmacology Research Group at Yale (SNRGY). Her research interests are cognitive inflexibility as a transdiagnostic mechanism underlying the development of depression and anxiety, and whether cognitive flexibility can interact with emotion regulation to shape emotional beliefs and experiences. Yutong plans to pursue a Ph.D. in education in preparation for a career in cognition-based research that fosters mechanistic understanding and better treatments for mood and anxiety disorders. In her spare time, Yutong enjoys cooking, reading, and practicing Tai Chi.
	Kendall Ertel is an undergraduate senior studying psychology in Yale College. She has been doing research at Yale since 2019. She has worked as an RA in the Infant Cognition Center under Dr. Karen Wynn, in the Mind and Development Lab under Dr. Paul Bloom, and now in the ARC lab. She has research experience in developmental, cognitive, social, and clinical psychology. Her main areas of interests include the impact of depression and anxiety disorders on individuals’ perception and interpretation of events and experience of time. She plans to pursue a doctorate in psychology and become a psychologist. She currently works as a crisis counselor at the Crisis Text Line.
	Kristjana Hyka graduated from Quinnipiac University in 2020 with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. She has been volunteering as a Crisis Counselor with Crisis Text Line since September 2021 and also pursued an international internship with a mental health organization based in the UK. During this internship, Kristjana had the opportunity to complete a research project in which the focus was men’s mental health and the stigma around it. Kristjana is currently working as a Behavioral Health Home Specialist at a community behavioral health clinic and is preparing to apply to graduate programs in clinical psychology and clinical mental health counseling. Kristjana became particularly interested in the comorbidity of mood and anxiety disorders, and their relationship with memory. She joined the ARC lab in July 2022 and is looking forward to getting involved in more aspects of the research process.
	Richard (Chard) Bershtein is an undergraduate junior at Claremont McKenna College, pursuing his B.A. in psychology. He is also an aspiring musician and audio engineer. Throughout his time at the ARC lab, Richard has taken on a plethora of tasks. Through these experiences, he has found that he is predominantly interested in learning about how individual differences affect the risk for the onset of different psychopathologies. Richard intends to take on a full-time RA position after he graduates before pursuing a PhD in clinical psychology. He hopes to open a private practice one day where he can provide mental services for people from all walks of life. When he is not fulfilling his RA duties, Richard can be found pursuing his passion for music through songwriting, producing, and performing.

ALUMNI

Reuma Gadassi-Polack was a Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellow in the ARC lab. She received her doctoral degree in Psychology from Bar-Ilan University, and her M.A. in Educational and Clinical Child Psychology (with honors), and B.A. in Psychology and Literature (with high honors) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Reuma’s research focuses on the affective and interpersonal aspects of depression and personality disorders. In the ARC lab, she worked on a project investigating risk factors for depression development. Specifically, she examined affective reactivity and regulation in response to interpersonal events in adolescents at familial risk for depression. To approach these questions she utilized various methods, including cognitive tasks, experience-sampling methods, and brain imaging.

Abigail (Abby) Beech is currently a lab coordinator in the Psychology Department at Tufts University. She graduated from Tufts in 2020 with a B.A. in Biopsychology and Child Study and Human Development, and completed her Master’s in Research in Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology at University College London and Yale University in 2022. Overall, she is interested in multimodal research examining internalizing disorders and their biomarkers.

Erica Ho is a 2022 graduate of the Clinical Psychology PhD program at Yale, and completed her clinical internship at VA Puget Sound, Seattle Division. She received her BA from Cornell University in 2013, with a major in psychology and minors in cognitive science and music. As an undergraduate, she studied the impact of ambiguous social exclusion on mood, under the supervision of Dr. Vivian Zayas. She then worked as a research coordinator under Dr. Michael Milham at the Child Mind Institute’s Center for the Developing Brain, on large-scale studies aiming to discover biological markers of mental health across the lifespan. Here in the ARC Lab, Erica’s dissertation examined ways in which intra- and inter-individual contexts associate with the perception and interpretation of social-emotional signals from others. She uses a range of methods including functional neuroimaging, computational modeling, online behavioral experiments, as well as daily diaries. As of 2022, Erica is a postdoctoral fellow in Rehabilitation Psychology at VA Puget Sound, Seattle Division. There, she is pursuing advanced clinical and research training in service of enhancing the wellbeing and social role participation of individuals with disabilities and chronic medical conditions such as cancer.

Ema Tanovic received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Yale in 2020. She completed her clinical internship at Pennsylvania Hospital/University of Pennsylvania Health System. Before coming to Yale, she graduated with high honors from Wesleyan University in 2014. Broadly, Ema’s research investigates the cognitive, affective, and behavioral mechanisms of anxiety. She is particularly interested in understanding how people respond to uncertainty and how heightened sensitivity to uncertain situations may confer risk for the development of internalizing psychopathology. Her dissertation focused on the development of a novel paradigm to study avoidance under uncertain threat. Ema currently works at The Boston Consulting Group.

Elizabeth (Libby) Lewis is a 2020 graduate of the Yale Clinical Psychology PhD program. Libby completed internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School. She received her BA from Cornell University in 2012, with a major in psychology and a minor in music. Before coming to Yale, she worked at NIMH in the Section on Affective Cognitive Neuroscience with James and Karina Blair, with whom she investigated the neural and cognitive underpinnings of Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Social Phobia in adults. She uses multiple methodologies, including eye tracking, peripheral psychophysiology, and neuroimaging, to approach questions involving the relation between cognition and emotion in processes that are cardinal to mood and anxiety disorders, such as worry and rumination. Libby is currently a post-doctoral fellow at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

​Michael Vanderlind received his B.S. in Psychology from The University of Texas at Austin in 2011 and completed his internship at Weill Cornell Medical College/New-York Presbyterian Hospital. His research examines how people respond to positive emotion and how individual differences in the regulation of positive emotion relate to affective psychopathology, particularly major depression. Michael also studies how clinical disorders and emotion dysregulation more generally affect cognitive processes such as attention, memory, and executive control. Michael uses multiple research methods, such as neuropsychological tests, clinical interviews, and electroencephalography, to address these aims. In his spare time, Michael enjoys eating his way through New York City, running along the East River, and returning to New Haven to visit his lab mates.​

Hannah Raila is currently a postdoctoral research at Stanford University, where she studies visual attention to obsession-related cues in OCD. She received her PhD in 2018 from Yale University, where she bridged cognitive and clinical labs to study how the visual “diet” of information that we consume underlies both positive emotion and psychopathology. To explore such topics, she primarily uses eye tracking, continuous flash suppression (CFS), and behavioral tasks.

Meghan Quinn is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University. She received her PhD in 2017 from Northwestern University. Her research examines individual differences in stress-sensitive cognitive processes and physiological systems. The goal of this work is to identify factors contributing to depression.

Kimberly Arditte  graduated in 2016 from the University of Miami. She is currently an Advanced Research Fellow in Women’s Mental Health at the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at the VA Boston Healthcare System. Her research focuses on identifying and attenuating transdiagnostic risk, including cognitive, emotional, and trauma-related factors, for affective disorders in women. She is also increasingly interested in trauma-related rumination as a factor that may explain the comorbidity between PTSD and depression and may represent a transdiagnostic target of intervention. She continues to collaborate with Dr. Joormann and other members of the ARC lab on projects related to these interests.

Vera Vine is currently an NIH T32 Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh/Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. She graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. As a graduate student at Yale, where she earned a doctorate in 2016, she studied the role of emotional awareness in emotion regulation, depressive rumination, and mood-related disorders. Currently her work focuses on the role of self-awareness of emotional and physiological states in predicting emotion regulation difficulties and the prospective onset and course of depression among at-risk individuals.

Catherine D’Avanzato is currently a psychologist in the Rhode Island Hospital Partial Hospital Program, within the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University Medical School.  She graduated from Northwestern University in 2005 and was a graduate student in the lab from 2007 to 2012.  Her research investigates the role of cognitive and biological processes in difficulties with emotion regulation among individuals with depression and anxiety disorders.  Her dissertation examined the relation between cognitive biases with the effectiveness of reappraisal, indicated by self-reported mood and physiological indices.  Her current research focuses on integrating empirically supported assessment and intervention techniques into routine clinical settings, with the goal of enhancing effective emotion regulation among individuals with these disorders within a partial hospital setting. 

Tanya Tran is currently a Staff Psychologist at the Rhode Island Hospital Mood Disorders Program.  She graduated with Honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004 and received her doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Miami in 2012. She recently completed a research fellowship in the Psychosocial Research Program at Butler Hospital through the Alpert Medical School of Brown University Clinical Psychology Training Consortium. The primary goal of her research is to gain a better understanding of how basic cognitive processes and individual differences in emotion regulation (ER) increase vulnerability to, maintain, and hinder recovery from mood and anxiety disorders. By examining cognitive factors which contribute to the onset and maintenance of depression, she also hopes to develop more effective treatment and prevention programs. Currently, she is examining the role of social media sites, such as Facebook, on emotion regulation and their subsequent impact on emotional well-being. She intends to apply this line of research to develop a novel, Internet-based intervention for depression to reach a broader population.

Joelle LeMoult received her doctoral degree from the University of Miami in 2012 and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. The overarching goal of her research is to further our understanding of the etiology, maintenance, and treatment of major depressive disorder. Using a multimodal approach, she examines cognitive, biological, and comorbid factors that, in interaction with environmental stressors, contribute to depressive symptoms. A related line of her work aims to translate this knowledge into clinical applications that improve treatment for depression.