Past Team Members

Surina Khurana

Data Manager

Surina is a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Public Health and Economics. She seeks to better marginalized communities, specifically by addressing health disparities and inequalities. She eventually hopes to pursue a career in the health care industry.

Orly Bell

Lab Manager

Orly Bell received her B.A. in Psychology from UC Berkeley in 2014. While completing her degree, Orly worked as a research assistant under Dr.'s Ron Dahl and Silvia Bunge investigating the relationship between sleep, puberty and risk taking behavior. Orly loves working with children of all ages and is particularly interested in the changes that occur throughout development. As a lab manager, Orly is responsible for overseeing all administrative tasks related to research projects and for training research assistants. She is also a lab manager for Dr. Ron Dahl's Youth Development Lab. Through her work with Dr. Dahl and Dr. Skeem she has realized that she wants to learn more about how to translate research into policy and practice. Orly is starting medical school in the fall and hopes to work in pediatrics, and she hopes to learn how to help translate science into clinical practice so that she can implement it in her practice

Megan Johnson

Dr. Johnson's research is primarily focused on understanding the developmental mechanisms underlying the development of externalizing psychopathology. As a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley, she is specifically interested in exploring the association between pubertal maturation and empathy development. Her previous research has focused on the hormonal influences of antisocial behavior, and has linked hypo-reactive HPA-axis functioning to psychopathic traits in adolescents and adults.

Ellicott Matthay

Dr. Matthay is a social epidemiologist and postdoctoral scholar for the Evidence for Action Methods Laboratory of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research focuses on understanding how social and economic programs and policies can be leveraged to improve population health and health inequalities, and on addressing methodological barriers to generating rigorous evidence on this topic. Dr. Matthay received her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley and her Masters of Public Health from the University of Washington while she was a Post-Bachelor Fellow at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Dr. Matthay’s research interests and areas of expertise include causal inference and epidemiologic methods, suicide and self-harm, community and firearm violence, injury epidemiology, psychiatric epidemiology, and global health.

Dorothy Han

Data Assistant

Dorothy is a senior majoring in Public Health. She is interested in working with underserved communities, particularly in the medical field via trauma informed intervention. Her current research interests include finding ways to minimize the disparities facing mentally ill and incarcerated individuals in both the healthcare and justice system. Dorothy plans to pursue both a MD and MPH after graduating from Berkeley.

Leah Jacobs

Leah Jacobs is a Ph.D. Candidate in Social Welfare. Leah’s scholarship traces the way in which sociostructural factors increase or decrease marginality among individuals labeled as “mentally ill.” Her dissertation investigates the degree to which spatial signifiers of social disadvantage explain enhanced risk of recidivism. Leah holds a B.S. in psychology from Northeastern University, an M.A. in Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning/Child Development from Tufts University, and an M.S.W. from UC Berkeley.

Alina Yu

Research Assistant

Alina is a third-year student studying Psychology and Public Health at UC Berkeley. She is also passionate about preventions of psychological disorders in different communities. Outside of school and research, She also enjoy her work with platforms offering health education and online counseling. For future plans, She intends to pursue the joint program of MSW and MPH in graduate school and later get the LCSW license.

May Lim

Research Assistant

May Lim is a Master of Public Policy candidate in the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. She graduated from the University of Washington in 2016 with bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Psychology. She has worked for local elected officials in both Seattle and LA and is interested in criminal justice policy, having worked extensively in prison advocacy around the issues of education and immigration.

Kathryn Schmidt

Research Assistant - Sonoma

Kathryn has been a Research Assistant with the Interventions project based in Sonoma, for the past three years. She graduated from Sonoma state University with a degree in psychology. She has always had a love for knowledge and research, and sharing what she has learned. Her research interest center around cognition, in specific anxiety. Kathryn hopes to one day gain her PhD to continue on as a Professor so that she may keep learning and researching within the world of psychology and mental health

Nidhi Chandra

Survey Researcher

Nidhi is a Survey Researcher for the Napa PRISM project. She graduated from UC Berkeley with degrees in Psychology and Social Welfare, and a minor in Disability Studies. She is passionate about working with people with disabilities and is interested in doing research on the intersection between the child welfare system, psychology, and disabilities.

Caroline Kwon

Research Assistant

Caroline is a second-year undergraduate student majoring in Psychology and minoring in Asian American Studies. She is interested in learning and spreading factual information to destigmatize mental illness and making mental health resources more accessible in traditionally underserved communities. After Cal, she hopes to pursue a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology.