Team - Risk Resilience Research Lab

Team

Staff

Priscilla Martin

Research Assistant - San Francisco

Priscilla Martin

Research Assistant - San Francisco

Priscilla is the San Francisco Research Assistant for the Interventions Project. She graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. She is interested in evaluating the psychological perspectives that contribute to the incarceration of youth and the subsequent outcomes of remediation. Priscilla intends on pursing a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in Forensic Psychology.

Email:priscilla.martin@berkeley.edu

Alejandra Hilbert

Research Assistant

Alejandra Hilbert

Research Assistant

Alejandra (she/they) graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with degrees in Psychology and Legal Studies. Passionate about engineering psychology, she is eager to explore how user-centered technology can support human perception and enhance decision-making. With an emphasis on creating impactful digital tools, Alejandra's research aims to bridge the gap between psychology and technology to benefit diverse populations.

Email:alejandrahilbert@berkeley.edu

Mason Munoz

Lab Manager & Research Assistant

Mason Munoz

Lab Manager & Research Assistant

Mason Munoz is a third-year student majoring in Psychology and minoring in Education at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include the complex nature of hallucinations, as well as the intersection of prosocial education and cognitive development in children. In his spare time, he advocates for mental health by bringing dogs onto the Berkeley Campus to uplift the local community.

Email:mason.munoz@berkeley.edu

Post-Docs & Grad Students

Lina Montoya

Lina Montoya

Dr Montoya is a postdoctoral fellow jointly appointed at UNC Chapel Hill and UC Berkeley. She has been a part of the Risk Resilience Lab since 2016; since then, her role has been as a biostatistician, applying causal inference estimation and inference techniques for randomized and observational studies to various projects. Currently, her research in the lab involves point-treatment and longitudinal causal inference methods to study individualized interventions for reducing recidivism among adult offenders with mental illness.

Email:lmontoya@berkeley.edu

Aldazia Green

Aldazia Green

Aldazia Green is a first-year MSW/Ph.D. student at the School of Social Welfare. Her research interests include examining the systemic and individual factors contributing to recidivism. Specifically, she is interested in addressing mental health factors that commonly affect justice-involved populations through investigating effective prevention interventions. Before attending UC Berkley, Aldazia received her BA in Psychology from Rutgers University. As a McNair Scholar at Rutgers, she examined if anti-Black women's biases and empathy have an effect on Black maternal health perceptions. Outside of her previous research experiences, Aldazia became an intern at New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prison organization ( NJ-Step), where she supported qualifying returning citizens in their transition from prison to college.

Email:aldazia_green@berkeley.edu

Student Research Assistants

Jishan Jiang

Research Assistant

Jishan Jiang

Research Assistant

Jishan Jiang is a second-year student at UC Berkeley, pursuing a double major in Legal Studies and Data Science, with a minor in Education. She is passionate about the intersection between policy, technology and educational equity. Her research interest revolves around learning design, curriculum development and educational policies that prioritizes marginalized or underrepresented students’ experience. With aspirations to become an educator and researcher, Jishan hopes to harness the transformative power of education to uplift and empower underserved communities.

Email:jishan.j@berkeley.edu

Vanessa Mae Villegas

Research Assistant

Vanessa Mae Villegas

Research Assistant

Vanessa is a recent graduate from the University of California, Berkeley with a Bachelors of Arts in Social Welfare and a minor in Public Policy. Her academic journey was driven by a passion for understanding how policies impact people's lives. With her interests studying the intersection between welfare and policy she recently completed her honors thesis studying the effects of Filipino labor migration on family dynamics and mental health. Vanessa plans to continue her education by pursuing a Master's degree and hopes to work in serving marginalized communities in the future.

Email:vvillegas@berkeley.edu

Affiliates

Mary-Lynn Garrett

Clinical Social Worker

Mary-Lynn Garrett

Clinical Social Worker

Mary-Lynn Garrett is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) and lead trainer on the Interventions Project at the University of California Berkeley. She obtained her Master's in Social Work with Community Mental Health focus from UC Berkeley's School of Social Welfare. She has two decades of experience working with adults with mental illness and severe medical and psycho-social needs in San Francisco. She makes use of her previous training in mental health treatment within the framework of the Cognitive Behavioral Interventions Core Curriculum (CBI-CC) designed by the University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute. She is certified as lead trainer of CBI-CC, provides training and consultation to the facilitators for the San Francisco site of the Interventions Project and coordinates all the groups delivered there. She also serves as the lead facilitator providing CBI-CC group sessions in San Francisco not only in community settings, but also the county jail. Ms. Garrett focuses her training and group facilitation to maintain strong alignment with the risk-need-responsivity-fidelity principle and with primary focus on addressing criminogenic factors among the group participants.

Email:mlgarrett@berkeley.edu

Stephania Hayes

Stephania Hayes

Stephania Hayes is a PhD Candidate at the School of Social Welfare. Her dissertation focuses on job-related stress and associated consequences experienced by peer support specialists employed in mental health organizations, including how such stress is affected by training or workplace conditions. Stephania brings to the lab her experience in mental health program administration (with special interests in innovation and evaluation), clinical assessment, and “big data” management. Her recent work synthesized several administrative databases from the state of Victoria, Australia to help examine the utility of outpatient civil commitment in their population of mental health service users over twelve years. Stephania holds a BA in Health Science from the University of Florida, an MA in Occupational Therapy from the University of Southern California, and certification as a Peer Support Specialist.

Email:stephania@berkeley.edu

Luyi Jian

Luyi Jian

Luyi Jian is a doctoral student at the School of Social Welfare. Her research interests include criminal justice, prevention and intervention of youth antisocial behavior, with a focus on developmentally wise interventions. Before pursuing her master’s degree in social work, Luyi was a police officer in Shanghai, China. She was the core member of a research project that examined the geographic patterns and behavioral characteristics of adult serial burglars. During her MSW program, she investigated young fathers in jails and explored associations between father-child relationship, behavioral health factors, and recidivism. Luyi holds a B.E. from Tongji University, an M.S. from People’s Public Security University of China, and an M.S.W. from Washington University in St. Louis.

Email:luyijian@berkeley.edu

Past Team Members

Orly Bell

Orly Bell

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

Nidhi Chandra

Nidhi Chandra

Nidhi supported various projects within the lab. She obtained her Master's in Social Welfare from UC Berkeley with a concentration in Specializing in Children, Youth and Family. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Psychology and Social Welfare, and a minor in Disability Studies. Her previous research includes working on the PRISM and Interventions projects, and she is passionate about research that evaluates supports for youth and adults with severe mental or cognitive impairments and their intersection with the legal system.

Email:nidhivchandra@berkeley.edu

Leah Jacobs

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.

Jaclyn Chambers

Jaclyn Chambers

Jaclyn Chambers is a doctoral student at the School of Social Welfare. Her research interests center on the intersection of social work and the legal system, with a particular emphasis on crossover youth who are dually involved in both the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Jaclyn was a research coordinator for several randomized controlled trials focused on substance abuse prevention and intervention. She holds a B.A. from Colgate University and an M.S.W. from New York University.

Email:jaclyn_chambers@berkeley.edu

Amanda Sadri

Survey Researcher

Amanda Sadri

Survey Researcher

Amanda Sadri is the Project Coordinator for the PRISM Study, where she is studying the problem of violence in closed forensic units at Napa State Hospital. Her research interests are the development of psychopathy and offending behavior, and particularly violence risk assessments and risk-reducing interventions.

Email:asadri07@berkeley.edu