Student and Alumni Highlights

Current News

Congratulations to Kendall Smith, who was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Congratulations to Kendall Poovey, who was awarded an F31 National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Congratulations to Laura Boyajian, who was awarded the Dr. Miles and Patricia Hardy Memorial Scholarship for the 2023 Summer semester.

The Valerie Reed Award recognizes a fourth year clinical student who most embodies the values of our clinical scientist training program. This year’s Valerie Reed Award went to Brad Brown. Nicely done, Brad!

Congratulations to Meaghan Brown, who received a micro-grant from the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center for her project, “From Guns to Intimate Partner Violence: The Impact of Power and Control.” Dr. Edelyn Verona is her major professor.

Jared Davis received the Eve Levine Teaching Award. Congratulations, Jared!

Congratulations to Andrew Devendorf who was featured as a Boundless Bull! Andrew also was interviewed for the podcast called “” from the Association for Psychological Science. The interview, titled “Lived experiences can be a strength. So why the bias against ‘me search’?” was noted as a “greatest hit” of the first 100 interviews in this series. You can read about this interview and listen to the podcast at this . Nicely done, Andrew.

Congratulations to Amanda Holbrook who won the Dr. and Mrs. Charles Spielberger Endowed Fund in Psychology Award for the 2023 Summer semester.

Congratulations to Emanuel Pedepo who was awarded the Presidential Doctoral Fellowship, which provides five years of funding.

We are grateful to Dr. Sylvia Carra for providing the Clinical Psychology Graduate Fellowships—one focused on clinical work and one focused on research. Congratulations to Allie Schuck (Clinical) and Alora McCarthy (Research) for being awarded these fellowships in the Summer of 2023.

Alora McCarthy also won the 2023 USF Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research Award. Congratulations, Alora!

Allie Schuck also received funding from the U.S. Department of Health: Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Program. Nicely done, Allie.

Bryan Benitez, Ph.D. (with Dr. Mark Goldman; 2021 now an Associate Research Scientist at Yale University School Medicine) was awarded a K99 from NIAAA to test a mobile CBT treatment targeting high risk drinking days for Spanish-speaking patients. Here is the to the project summary.

Lauren Bylsma, Ph.D. was elected as a Fellow of the Society for Psychophysiological Research (SPR). “The SPR Fellows program honors SPR members who have made substantial, sustained contributions both to the field of psychophysiology and to SRP.” 

Emily Choquette, Ph.D. just received a K23 Award from the National Institute of Mental Health. She will be funded for her project titled “Interoceptive mechanisms of body image disturbance in anorexia nervosa.” 

Erica Coates, Ph.D. was elected as a Promising Scholar by the Foundation for Child Development. The Promising Scholars program provides this award for young scholars “who demonstrated strong potential to conduct rigorous high-quality implementation research focused on the early care and education workforce.

Laura (Starr) Edwards, Ph.D. was awarded the Founders Award from the St. George’s Episcopal School, where she is the College Counseling Director. The announcement stated that “Dr. Edwards gives considerable care and individual attention to each high school student as they pursue their college dreams.”