MEET OUR TEAM

We have a great team that works hard to make our research happen. With a combination of principal investigators, clinical team members, graduate students, undergraduate students, and a research coordinator, the COAST Lab provides ample opportunities to develop research skills and work on different projects.

Emma AdamEmma Adam is a developmental psychologist with an interest in applying theory and research on human development to informing policies and programs aimed at improving the wellbeing of children, adolescents and young adults. She is an expert in the developmental psychobiology of stress and sleep. Adam studies the contributions of work, school, family and individual factors to physiological stress in adolescents and young adults and the implications of stress for child and adolescent behavioral, cognitive and emotional development. She also examines social influences on sleep in children and adolescents, and the implications of variations in sleep timing and quality for health and performance. Her current research projects examine the role of stress, stress hormones and sleep in the development of mood and anxiety disorders in adolescents and young adults; racial/ethnic disparities in stress and the impact of perceived discrimination on stress hormones, sleep and health; the impact of early adverse relationship experiences on biological stress and health in young adults; and how variations in stress and sleep affect the executive functioning and academic performance of Chicago Public Schools students.

In addition to her Northwestern University affiliations, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Research in Child Development, the Society for Research on Adolescence, and the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology. She is the recipient of a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Post-doctoral Fellowship (2003–04), a William T. Grant Scholars Award (2004–09), and most recently the prestigious Curt Richter Award from the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology (2013).

Research Staff

Aubrey Russak-Pribble – Project Coordinator/ Lab Manager

Aubrey graduated from Centre College in 2016 with a B.S. in behavioral neuroscience and a minor in psychology. Originally from St. Pete, Florida, she joined the COAST lab in October 2018 and is now serving as the Project Coordinator for the BIO Study. She is interested in the impacts of chronic and acute stress on physical health, mental health, and negative life outcomes. She is particularly interested in interventions that reduce the effects of compounded inequities in health and life outcomes due to factors like poverty, race, gender, and mental illness. Previously, she examined these issues by working as a with incarcerated individuals and adolescent girls in residential settings in Kentucky. In addition to her time in the lab, she is pursuing her master’s degree in Public Policy and Administration with a specialization in Global Health at Northwestern. In her free time, she likes to explore the city, cook new foods, and snuggle up with a book and her cats.  

 

Postdoctoral Fellows

Sarah Collier

Sarah Collier is a postdoctoral fellow who graduated from Northwestern’s Human Development and Social Policy program.  Her research interests include stress biology, poverty policy, and the evaluation of related interventions and programs. In the COAST lab, she oversees the collection of cortisol data for the Quiet Time study. She has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a master’s degree in Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology, both from Boston College. Prior to Northwestern, Sarah worked in workforce development and the community college system in San Diego, CA.

Tierney McMahon

Dr. Tierney McMahon received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University at Buffalo in 2021 and completed her predoctoral clinical internship at the Charleston Consortium Psychology Internship Program. She joined the COAST Lab in May 2022 after beginning a postdoctoral fellowship in the Institute of Developmental Sciences at Northwestern University and is working with Dr. Adam on the Youth Mindful Awareness Program project. Dr. McMahon’s research focuses on understanding the development of emotion regulation processes and risk for emotional disorders. She is particularly interested in understanding how contexts (e.g., stress, parenting, peers) shape the neurodevelopmental underpinnings of emotion and emotion regulation behaviors, and how mindfulness-based treatments can disrupt maladaptive patterns in emotion regulation to prevent the onset of emotional disorders.

Keira Leneman

Keira Leneman, Ph.D. (she/her) is a post-doctoral scholar in the COAST lab and Assistant Professor of Instruction in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern. Her research interests surround stress, psychophysiology, self-regulation, and how these intersect with Whiteness and systemic racism. Specifically, she is focused on understanding how stress, physiological reactivity, and regulation are shaped by racial socialization and racial identity. Additionally, Keira is passionate about integrating community engagement and diversity science principles into her research and teaching. Her dissertation work investigated physiological stress responses of White, liberal emerging adults while talking about race and privilege. Long term goals surround better understanding predictors and barriers of anti-racism and White Fragility in order to foster anti-racism development across the lifespan.

Undergraduate Team Members

Amelia Montagnino
Amelia (she/her) is a senior studying Psychology, Global Health, and Mathematics. She grew up in Maryland and transferred to Northwestern from Williams College as a sophomore. Amelia is most drawn to the intersection of public health and mental health, acknowledging the power of upstream work, programs, and policy to promote well-being. She is interested in studying how social determinants and environments influence stress and mental health development and treatment outcomes. She is currently a Resident Assistant, hotline Crisis Counselor, and is involved in the suicide prevention field. In the future, Amelia hopes to work in public mental health and possibly pursue counseling. Some of her favorite things are sunsets, playing volleyball, being with children, her dog Maisy, comedies, and being outdoors.

Ashley Trattner
Ashley Trattner is a senior at Northwestern studying psychology and creative writing. Her research interests include adolescent development, identity development, psychopathology (more specifically eating disorders, PTSD, and addiction), as well as life transitions and mental health. Some of her hobbies are hiking, reading, going to the gym, playing guitar, and drawing. A fun fact about Ashley is that she can make a water droplet noise with her mouth (like from Ferris Bueller). She is from New Jersey, she has two older sisters (one of which also went to Northwestern), and she’s completing a senior thesis this year with COAST focusing on adolescent stress and identity development.

Sahil Desai
Sahil Desai is a Human Development in Context and Biological Science major. His research interests include health psychology, social justice, identity development, and stress. He is especially interested in how social identities shape health and developmental outcomes. With his free time, he likes to play the piano, wander the city, and binge early 2000s television.

Former Undergraduate Team Members

Affiliated Members

Rachael Ellison (Illinois Institute of Technology)

Dr. Rachael Ellison is an Assistant Professor of Psychology as well as Associate DCT and Practicum Coordinator at Illinois Institute of Technology. She is a Clinical Neuropsychologist with specialized training in traumatic brain injury, dementia, ADHD, intersecting identities, systemic injustice, and PTSD, and conducts neuropsychological evaluations and cognitive rehabilitation. She completed her clinical internship through the UCSD and VA San Diego Healthcare System with specialized rotations in neuropsychology, TBI, cognitive rehabilitation, and PTSD, and post-doctoral fellowship in clinical neuropsychology through Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital, while also engaging in post-doctoral research at Northwestern University throughout her fellowship.

Her doctoral degree in Clinical and Community Psychology from DePaul University focused on reducing systemic injustice and improving the lives of marginalized individuals and groups through research on racial privilege, increasing openness to diversity and cultural competence, engaging individuals and groups from privileged backgrounds in social justice work. Dr. Ellison graduated from Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy. Her current research merges her background and interest in social justice and community through her Socially Conscious Lab. She is also serving a six-year term as the Chair for the Division 40 Women in Neuropsychology (WIN) Committee, and speaks regularly at national conferences and other training events.

Jacquelyn Stephens

Jacquelyn Stephens is a postdoctoral fellow who graduated from Northwestern’s  Human Development and Social Policy program, and was a fellow in the Society, Biology, and Health (SBH) and DevSci clusters. Her research examines how emotion processes change across the lifespan, highlighting the consequences for health, well-being, and relationship functioning. She is also interested in how stress and negative emotions get “under the skin” to affect health, and how positive emotions might help to buffer this process. Before attending Northwestern, Jacquelyn received a B.A. in Psychology from DePauw University and worked for two years at the Prindle Institute for Ethics. In her spare time, she enjoys doing yoga, reading in her hammock, and trying new restaurants in Chicago.

Stephanie Koning (University of Nevada, Reno)

Dr. Koning’s background is in population health, sociology and policy research. Her focus areas are biopsychosocial determinants of maternal and child health; structural violence and social stress; and the health implications of migration and displacement. She has led or co-led multiple data collection projects using survey, interview and ethnographic methods, and uses quantitative analytical techniques from biostatistical, epidemiological and quasi-experimental study designs. Her work spans local, global and international border contexts including Northern Nevada, North America and Southeast Asia.

Interpersonal violence affects 1 in 3 women and nearly half of children globally. Additionally, organized violence forcibly displaces over 1% of the world’s population yearly. Each type of violence operates within broader systems of inequality—structural violence. Yet despite wide recognition of its harm, how violence operates within and across global contexts to get “under the skin” in ways affecting biology, behavior and health over the life course remains poorly understood and poorly addressed. To confront this, she studies how violence and stress are socially patterned and underlie health inequities through biopsychosocial pathways over the individual life course and across generations. With the aim of promoting social justice and human rights as critical aspects of public health, she partners with communities, women’s groups, government agencies and the United Nations to conduct collaborative research that informs public policy and health practice.

Shanting Chen (University of Florida)

Dr. Shanting Chen (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Florida. She received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Her research interests have broadly centered on the intersection of stress, family, and cultural contexts in understanding the development of ethnic/racial minoritized adolescents. Specifically, she explores the social-cultural and physiological mechanisms (e.g., Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis, allostatic load) of the effects of stress (e.g., perceived discrimination) on ethnic minority adolescents’ well-being. In addition, she takes a strength- (rather than risk-) based approach to explore the adaptive and protective factors (e.g., parental/peer cultural socialization, psychological resilience) that promote ethnic minority adolescents’ academic outcomes and psycho-social and physical development. Her research is theoretically driven by ecological theory, the integrative model of minority child development, and the biopsychosocial model of health.