Alumni
Alumni of the Georgetown University Doctoral Program in Developmental Science are currently employed in a wide variety of academic, research, and policy settings.
Jessica Simon (Howard) successfully defended her dissertation, entitled Neural Basis of Aging and Implicit Associative Learning, on June 9, 2011. She is currently working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Dr. Mark Gluck at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers-Newark.
Amanda Exner Staiano (Calvert) successfully defended her dissertation, Impact of Cooperative versus Competitive Exergame Play on Overweight and Obese Adolescents' Physical, Socio-Emotional, and Cognitive Health on December 10, 2010. She is currently working as an NIH-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Dr. Peter Katzmarzyk in the Physical Activity and Obesity Epidemiology Laboratory at Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
Devon Brost Oskvig successfully defeneded her dissertation, Maternal immune activation alters the behavioral, cytokine, and gene expression profiles in rat offspring, on August 31, 2010. She will continue her work examining the molecular mechanisms by which maternal infections during pregnancy disrupt fetal brain development and serve as a risk factor of psychiatric disorders as a post-doctoral research fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health in the laboratory of Dr. Miles Herkenham.
Melanie Stollstorff (Vaidya) successfully defended her dissertation, Modulation of reasoning bias and brain activation by serotonin transporter genotype and emotional content, on August 27, 2010. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder conducting research in developmental cogntive neuroscience.
Elizabeth Zack (Barr) successfully defended her dissertation, Infant Transfer of Learning Across 2D/3D Dimensions: A Touch Screen Paradigm, on July 28, 2010. She is currently working as a Postdoctoral Research Associate with Dr. Andrew Meltzoff in the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Alexis Lauricella (Calvert) successfully defended her dissertation, Infants' Learning from Videos: Influence of Character Interaction and Character Familiarity on April 21, 2010. She is currently working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Dr. Ellen Wartella in the School of Communications at Northwestern University where she continues to study how young children learn from media.
Hayley Cleary (Woolard) successfully defended her dissertation entitled An Observational Study of Interview Characteristics and Miranda in Juvenile Interrogations, on March 30, 2010. She is currently employed as the KIDS COUNT Director at Voices for Virginia's Children, a statewide multi-issue children’s policy research and advocacy organization in Richmond, VA..
Ilana Bennett (Howard) successfully defended her dissertation, entitled Aging, Implicit Learning, and White Matter Integrity, on August 31, 2009. She is currently working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Dr. Bart Rypma at the Center for BrainHealth and the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas and at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Recently, Dr. Bennett received the Friends of BrainHealth Distinguished New Scientist Award.
Amy Lowenstein (Phillips) successfully defended her dissertation, Fostering the Socio-Emotional Adjustment of Low-Income Children: The Effects of Universal Pre-Kindergarten and Head Start in Oklahoma, on June 3, 2009. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute of Human Development and Social Change at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, where she works with Drs. Cybele Raver and Larry Aber. At the Institute, Amy's current research focuses on understanding how school-level socioeconomic disadvantage affects children's academic achievement and socio-emotional outcomes during the elementary school years.
Naomi Lee (Moghaddam) successfully defended her dissertation, entitled Sustaining and challenging group-based inequalities: A meaning-centered approach on April 17, 2009. She is currently a Post-Doctoral Research fellow at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where she is working as part of WIDA (World-class instructional design and assessment). Her work will focus on designing and conducting qualitative research on K-12 English-language learner education in 22 participating states, with the aim of promoting educational equity and achievement among English-language learners.
Nancy Crowell (Phillips) is currently Associate Director for Education Research at the Center on Health and Education at Georgetown University where she oversees a multi-million dollar project funded by the U.S. Dept. of Education testing a model of professional development for pre-K teachers in the District of Columbia. She successfully defended her dissertation, Language Environment and Positive Caregiving Climate in Early Childhood Care and Education and Their Relationship to Child Language Development on March 24, 2009.
Kelly Anne Barnes (Vaidya) is currently a post-doctoral fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, training with Drs. Brad Schlaggar and Steve Petersen. She successfully defended her dissertation, Implicit Learning in Typical Development and Children with Developmental Disorders on August 15, 2008. Her fellowship will extend her training in the field of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.
Samantha Harvell (Woolard) successfully defended her dissertation entitled A Developmental Assessment of Procedural Justice: Does Process Matter to Juvenile Detainees? on April 25, 2008. Following graduation, she served as a Congressional Fellow with the Society for Research in Child Development where she worked for one year as a Legislative Assistant on the staff of a member of Congress. Sam then spent a year as the Senior Director for Early Childhood and Juvenile Justice Policy at First Focus, a bipartisan children's advocacy organization in D.C., and is currently a Senior Associate with the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on the States, a division of the Pew Charitable Trusts.
