Florida International University recently issued the following announcement.
The return of in-person learning during the ongoing pandemic has raised concerns about wellbeing in our communities as well as challenges during the transition. At FIU, experts are available to discuss a variety of topics related to retuning to school including health, anxiety, parenting and how to establish new routines.
For help contacting any of our experts, please contact the Office of Media Relations:
Madeline Baro, director of media relations: 305-348-2234, mbaro@fiu.edu
Maydel Santana, associate vice president: 305-348 -1555, santanam@fiu.edu
Dianne Fernandez, broadcast media specialist: 305-608-4870, dfernand37@fiu.edu
Gaby Aguirrechu, media relations representative: 305-348-2232, gaguirre@fiu.edu
Rosanna Castro, senior account manager, Center for Children and Families: 305-348-5472, roscastr@fiu.edu
The full list of experts that will be continuously updated can be found below.
Parenting & Academic Readiness
Associate Professor and Associate Director of Clinical Training
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Graziano focuses on the role of children’s self-regulation as it pertains to school readiness, early intervention, learning, and fitness. He is particularly interested in how parental and environmental factors may influence or moderate the impact of regulatory processes on adaptive functioning outcomes. Special emphasis on the role of physiological and neurocognitive processes in the development of psychopathology as well as pediatric obesity. A large portion of his research focuses on developing and examining early interventions that can target children’s self-regulation skills and subsequent adaptive and health related outcomes.
Emotional Behavioral Disorders
Assistant Professor
Teaching & Learning
Center for Children and Families
Cumming’s research focuses on improving the social, emotional, and academic outcomes of students with disabilities, with a particular focus on students with or at-risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), through better understanding the underlying variables that contribute to and escalate students’ academic and behavior problems through an interdisciplinary approach, developing and testing prevention/intervention programs that improve students’ self-regulatory abilities, and gaining a greater knowledge of how working conditions contribute to special educators’ use of evidenced-based practices and intent to continue teaching.
Email: michelle.cumming@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-2005
Anxiety, Depression & Self-Harm
Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Pettit conducts research on depression, anxiety and suicidal behaviors in childhood and adolescence. He has a particular interest in the course of depression, anxiety and suicidal behaviors over time, including interpersonal and cognitive factors that contribute to the onset, maintenance and recurrence of these behaviors. His research also focuses on the development and evaluation of interventions for these behaviors.
Email: jpettit@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-1671
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
McMakin uses conceptual models and tools (e.g. fMRI) from developmental neuroscience to inform interventions for adolescents with, or at risk for, problems related to controlling emotion and behavior (e.g. suicide, depression, anxiety). Her research is currently exploring two areas that she has identified as having high translational potential: enhancing reward processing during the sensitive window of early adolescence to observe potential impacts on the onset, maintenance, and recurrence of depression; and examining sleep as it relates to emotional processing and neurodevelopment in adolescents with, or at risk for, anxiety or depression.
Email: dmcmakin@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-0042
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Ng conducts research with the goal of advancing the science and practice of psychotherapy for youths, especially adolescents with depression. She examines change mechanisms and processes of evidence-based psychotherapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy to better understand how they work. Ng also studies how to personalize mental health interventions by developing and applying methods to select and tailor therapies to maximize benefit to each individual youth.
Email: meiyi.ng@fiu.edu
Language Development
Melissa Baralt
Associate Professor
Department of Modern Languages
Center for Children and Families
Baralt's funded studies explore how bilingualism moderates executive function in children born prematurely. She and her team are working with FIU's biomedical engineering faculty to use Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to explore the neural recruitment of executive functioning in preterm-born children with different language environments. Baralt's research also focuses on language-development interventions for young children, with a focus on bilingual language development.
Email: mbaralt@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-2854
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Pruden's research program, the Project on Language and Spatial Development, aims to understand how children acquire language, particularly those words that describe the spatial and relational world. She explores the causes and consequences of individual and sex differences in spatial language and spatial cognition in both child and adult populations. Her recent research examines cognitive, cultural and biological causes of individual and sex differences in spatial language and cognition.
Email: sdick@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-2784
Trauma & Mental Health
Assistant Professor
Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work
Center for Children and Families
Fava’s research bridges the child maltreatment and sexuality fields from a developmental, trauma-informed, resilience-based framework via participant-centered and community-based research methods. She is especially interested in understanding multilevel factors impacting healthy development to inform effective and holistic interventions.
Email:nfava@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-4568
Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Comer’s program of research examines four areas of overlapping inquiry: The assessment, phenomenology, and course of child anxiety disorders; the development and evaluation of evidence-based treatments for childhood psychopathology, with particular focus on the development of innovative methods to reduce systematic barriers to effective mental health care in the community; national patterns and trends in the utilization of mental health services and quality of care; and the psychological impact of disasters and terrorism on youth.
Email: jocomer@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-7580
ADHD & Behavioral Problems
Director, Distinguished University Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Pelham has focused his research on ADHD in children and adolescents for nearly 40 years with interests in treatment, development and evaluation, including behavioral treatments, pharmacotherapy, and the combination of the two. Pelham studies the outcomes in adolescence and adulthood of ADHD children, focusing on multiple domains including substance use. He founded the nationally acclaimed Summer Treatment Program, which is widely recognized as the state of the art program in treatment for children and adolescents with ADHD.
Email: wpelham@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-3002
Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Fabiano’s research focuses on the development, validation and implementation of effective assessments and interventions for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and their families. He has expertise in assessment and intervention development and implementation for youth with ADHD. This has included the development a rating scale teachers and parents can use to indicate impairment in daily life functioning, a parenting intervention for fathers of children with ADHD, a school-based behavioral intervention for children with ADHD in special education placements and an intensive psychosocial intervention for novice teen drivers with ADHD. He has served as principal investigator or co-investigator on multiple clinical trials that investigated psychosocial and/or pharmacological treatments for ADHD.
Email: gfabiano@fiu.edu
Phone:716-359-7500
Research Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Schatz's expertise is on evidenced-based interventions for children and adolescents with ADHD. This work includes an emphasis on family-based behavioral interventions designed to improve communication and problem-solving strategies for adolescents with ADHD and their parents with a goal of helping adolescents achieve greater success at home, at school, and with peers. Schatz also focuses on understanding which types of interventions are most effective for students with ADHD in academic settings.
Email: nschatz@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-0663
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Raiker’s program of research focuses broadly on understanding neurocognitive dysfunction in individuals with ADHD and identifying optimal methods of integrating this knowledge into treatment outcome research. Specifically, he is interested in the extent to which deficits in these processes are associated with the symptoms and functional outcomes experienced by individuals with the disorder. Furthermore, he is interested in integrating multiple levels of analysis to further isolate the contribution of neurocognitive functioning to the disorder and improve treatment outcomes. Currently, he is examining the interaction of multiple dysfunctional cognitive processes and what implications these deficits have for assessment and intervention strategies.
Email:jraikerj@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-1970
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Musser’s expertise and research focuses in furthering the understanding of a multitude of behavior problems of childhood and adolescence. These problems include those that involve disruptions in behavior, cognition, and emotion. She currently is leading research projects on childhood ADHD, anxiety, autism spectrum disorders, disruptive behavior problems, and teen cannabis abuse.
Email: emusser@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-1034
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Hart is an expert in the area of promoting school readiness in early childhood for children with or at-risk for ADHD and related disruptive behavior disorders and learning problems. Hart is one of the key leaders in the CCF’s efforts to translate and disseminate evidence-based interventions to promote school readiness for young children into early childhood centers and public schools, as well as community-based afterschool and summer programs, in Miami-Dade County’s communities of greatest need. Her research and clinical work addresses the development, evaluation, and dissemination of early behavioral and academic interventions and treatments across home, school, clinic, summer, and community settings. Over the last several years, her work has also focused on the development of interventions addressing issues of intervention attendance and adherence for families of children from low-income backgrounds; culturally competent interventions for families from Latino/Hispanic and Haitian backgrounds; and mental health policy as it relates to the dissemination of evidence-based interventions in school and community settings.
Email:khart@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-4160
Developmental Delays
Professor, Interim Director of Clinical Training
Program Director, Clinical Science
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
A licensed and board-certified clinical child psychologist, Bagner studies interventions for at-risk infants and young children and their families and etiological models of early childhood behavior problems. Bagner's primary research interests are in the development and evaluation of psychosocial interventions for early childhood behavior problems. His research targets children for whom evidence-based treatments do not exist, such as children with developmental delay and infants with emerging behavior problems, and examines etiological models of early childhood behavior problems to inform his intervention research.
Email: dbagner@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-7548
Distinguished University Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Bahrick conducts research focusing on the early development of attention, perception, learning and memory for social and nonsocial events in typically developing infants and children as well as in children of atypical development.
Email:bahrick@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-3380
Substance Use
Professor, Chair
Department of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Immunology
Center for Children and Families
Through his research, Gonzalez aims to identify neurocognitive differences that may place individuals at risk for substance use disorders or that emerge from their use. He has approximately 20 years of experience conducting research on neurocognitive contributors and consequences of substance use and addiction, with a focus on cannabis. He is currently the site co-principal investigator of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study that enrolls 11,000+ healthy children and follow them from age 9-10 into early adulthood in order to better understand biological and environmental contributors healthy development, including risk factors and consequences for substance use disorders.
Email: gonzara@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-4921
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Trucco's program of research is centered on understanding early risk and protective factors that lead to adolescent delinquency and substance use. Informed by developmental theory, her work examines how factors such as early childhood stressors, personality, biology, parenting, and peers impact risk for substance use across childhood into young adulthood. The goal of this line of research is to improve substance use prevention programming for children and teens.
Email: etrucco@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-8426
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Sutherland focuses on understanding the impact of drug abuse on human brain function. His research aims to understand the brain mechanisms that contribute to continued drug use with specific emphasis on nicotine addiction, marijuana use, and attentional process. Sutherland's research employs multiple neuroimaging tools to identify potential biomarkers for diagnosis and tracking of disease progression, new targets for therapeutic interventions, and strategies for expediting the implementation of personalized treatment.
Email: masuther@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-7962
Research Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
Center for Children and Families
Hawes' expertise is focused on understanding the affective and neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the early-onset and developmental course of distinct facets of psychopathology across childhood and adolescence. His work is particularly targeted toward identifying how these processes contribute to the onset, maintenance and desistance from high-risk behaviors via unique etiological pathways.
Email: shawes@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-5439
Original source can be found here.
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