Faculty mentor and collaborate with undergraduate and graduate students on a wide range of research projects. Students interested in gaining research experience or looking for a thesis or capstone advisor are encouraged to reach out to faculty directly to learn more about possible research opportunities.
Dr. Carrie Andreoletti <andreolettic@ccsu.edu>
Areas of interest: Attitudes and stereotypes about aging and older adults, benefits of intergenerational connections, health and well-being across the lifespan.
Potential projects: Open to student ideas in my areas of interest and expertise – aging/gerontology, lifespan development, stereotypes, positive psychology
Dr. Julia Blau <blau@ccsu.edu>
Perception Action Laboratory
Areas of interest: Ecological Psychology broadly, but Cognition more specifically; Memory; Perception, Action; Arts and Aesthetics
Ongoing projects: Currently working on several projects involving the perception of events in Films, as indexed by the mathematical structure of the editing.
Future projects: Work on the emotional impact of event perception, using fractal structure to relieve anxiety, the learning of editors over time, event perception changes between cultures, and a scientific exploration of aesthetics.
Dr. Caleb Bragg <bragg.cb@ccsu.edu>
Organizational Psychology Answers Lab (OPAL)
Areas of interest: Self-control; Careless Responding; Counterproductive Work Behavior; Job Performance; Selection; Early Career Success, School to Work Transitions; Occupational Health; Job Stress
Ongoing projects: Developing and validating self-control measures in student and early career populations; Validating Multi Student Performance Scale in US and minority sample
Dr. Holly Brott <brott@ccsu.edu>
Areas of interest: Poverty, homelessness, reproductive justice, disability, contextual influences on service delivery, stigma, program evaluation
Ongoing projects: Evaluation research for the Central Community Health Education Clinic, exploring barriers and facilitators to inclusion for college students with disabilities, barriers to contraceptive engagement during episodes of housing insecurity
Potential projects: I am open to supporting students on research projects related to my interests and community psychology topics/constructs and methods (e.g., sense of community, empowerment, action research, etc.).
Dr. Jim Conway <conwayj@ccsu.edu>
Areas of interest: Open to studies on positive youth development; children with incarcerated parents
Potential projects: Interested in supervising theses focusing on positive youth development in general. I am particularly interested in supervising projects focusing on children with incarcerated parents, which is my main area of research.
Dr. Silvia Corbera-Lopez <silviac@ccsu.edu>
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab (ScAN)
Areas of interest: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience; and research interest that has a clinical component and/or developmental component.
Ongoing projects: online project aimed at examining social cognitive and affective skills in healthy individuals and individuals with schizotypy and autism traits (active before COVID). Validating a measure of emotion recognition in children; Collaboration in which we are examining social and affective information in schizophrenia and autism.
Potential projects: Besides area of research described above, interests in social cognitive and affective constructs, from a cognitive neuroscience perspective such as empathy, emotion processing, Theory of Mind, rejection/ostracism
Dr. Carolyn Fallahi <fallahic@ccsu.edu>
Sexual and Gender Minority Stress and Health Lab
Areas of interest: mental health, classification of psychiatric disorders, LGBTQ+ mental health, the scholarship of teaching.
Ongoing projects: Sexual and Gender Minorities and the effects of adverse childhood events. Also, what kinds of variables, e.g., resilience, etc. help buffer negative effects to minority stress.
Dr. Andrea June <ajune@ccsu.edu>
Areas of interest: Age-friendly environments (universities, cities, health systems), Mental Health and Aging, Gerontology in Higher Education
Ongoing projects: Advancing age-friendly university initiatives, increasing age literacy and decreasing ageism
Dr. Amanda M. Marín-Chollom <amarin-chollom@ccsu.edu>
HDWC Research: Health, Disease, and Well-being within Communities
Areas of interest: Stress and coping within a sociocultural context, chronic illness prevention, health behavior change, health disparities, cancer survivorship
Ongoing projects: Chronic illness prevention in college students, Stress and Coping during the Covid Pandemic, Latina Cancer Survivorship
Potential projects: Impact of cultural beliefs/values on stress, coping, health behaviors, and health seeking behaviors.
Dr. Marisa Mealy <mealymar@ccsu.edu>
Culture & Intergroup Relations Lab
Areas of interest: cross-cultural psychology, intergroup relations, and other social psychology topics
Ongoing projects: Resistance and Black Lives Matter, National identity and test performance, Academic attitudes and retention among Latinos, The effect of exposure to news headlines on Black Americans, and National identity and test performance
Potential projects: Prefer to supervise theses or capstones that are related to national/global culture, ethnicity/ethnic identity, intergroup relations (stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination, etc.), academic achievement/retention, and/or related social psychology topics.
Dr. John Protzko <protzko@ccsu.edu>
The Assumption Lab
Areas of interest: Metascience, Social Cognition, Cognitive Development, and investigating underlying assumptions.
Ongoing projects: Currently working on why people believe young people today are in decline; understanding the role of focal cortical lesions on cognitive development; understanding why we believe in free will; looking at how practicing scientists change their beliefs in light of evidence; cross-cultural work across dozens of countries.
Dr. Jason Sikorski <sikorskijaf@ccsu.edu>
Clinical Psychology Research Lab
Areas of interest: Clinical Psychology, Gender Role Development, Toxic Masculinity, Suicide Prevention
Projects: I have supervised theses pertaining to pornography use, toxic masculinity and various topics pertaining to psychological problems in people.
Dr. Skyler Sklenarik <s.sklenarik@ccsu.edu>
Areas of interest: I am interested in investigating the behavioral, cognitive, and neural underpinnings of addiction and related psychological disorders using an interdisciplinary approach. My research integrates various experimental methodologies including virtual reality, neuroimaging, and physiological monitoring to develop a deeper understanding of substance abuse and anxiety disorders. I am particularly interested in studying the causes and consequences of nicotine, alcohol, and cannabis use among college-aged young adults. The ultimate goal of my research is to inform risk prediction, prevention, and treatment methods to improve health-related outcomes.
I do not have any ongoing projects that I anticipate working on at Central, but here are a couple ideas for potential projects:
Investigate whether individuals can be conditioned to prefer a virtual reality environment paired with nicotine administration Explore novel methods to improve extinction of learned fear, such as cannabidiol (CBD) administration
Dr. Helena Swanson <hswanson@ccsu.edu>
REACH LAB (Research and Evaluation Advancing Community Health Lab)
Areas of interest: The REACH lab is passionate about advancing community health and equity through action-oriented research. REACH collaborates with community partners to conduct research and evaluation to advance their organizational missions related to social justice, including but not limited to, age-friendly communities and addressing food and housing insecurity.
Ongoing projects: evaluation research for the Central Community Health Education Clinic, evaluation research advancing age-friendly communities in CT
a research understanding food and housing insecurity in college student populations and beyond, research related to the development and improvement of intergenerational interventions, and working with community-based organizations to advance social justice.
Dr. Nghi D. Thai <thaingd@ccsu.edu>
Areas of interest: School engagement, intergroup relations, program evaluation
Ongoing projects: Program evaluation of the Moving Towards Mastery cohort program, school engagement and barriers during Covid-19
Potential projects: Program evaluation of the Success Central mentoring program, trauma informed community development
Dr. Candice Wallace <Candice.wallace@ccsu.edu>
The Social Psychology Lab
Areas of interest: The impact of culturally specific experiences on psychosocial outcomes. I am focused on these outcomes for racial minorities and/or marginalized populations.
Ongoing projects: The impact of culturally specific protective factors on reductions in violence among African American men. The impact of race-based gender socialization on several outcomes (i.e., self-esteem, coping mechanisms, academic/career outcomes, gender identity and gendered behaviors).
Potential projects: I am open to working with students on research related to my projects/interests as stated above. I am especially interested in examining race and culture and am willing to work on a wide range of projects that explore these phenomena.
Dr. Rebecca Wood <woodre@ccsu.edu>
Applied Developmental Physiological Laboratory
Areas of interest: Adults' responses to infant cries; communication development; attachment
Ongoing projects: COVID-19 and parenting stress; physiological and perceptual responses to infant crying
Potential projects: Acoustic characteristics of cries and listeners' physiological responses; empathy and responses to crying; too many to list here
