2024 Workshop
The FF Data Workshop was held June 12-14, 2024, at Columbia University in New York City.
| Yujeong ChangYujeong Chang is a first-year doctoral student at The Ohio State University College of Social Work. She received her Master’s degree in Social Work (MSW) from the University of Michigan. She served as a project manager at the University of Michigan School of Social Work on research projects pertaining to child maltreatment prevention and trauma-informed programs and practices for K-12 schools and also served as a lab assistant for the Department of Psychology, conducting clinical interviews and intellectual assessments for the purpose of FFCWS data collection. Her research interests focus on examining the complex mechanism and transactional processes of multilevel risk and protective factors across the socio-ecological framework that shapes the psychopathology and resilience of children and adolescents, especially those who have experienced adverse experiences and trauma (e.g., child maltreatment) |
| Ashley JacksonDr. Ashley Jackson is an assistant professor at the School of Social Work at Rutgers University. Much of Dr. Jackson’s research has been motivated by her post-MSW macro practice experience in research, program development, and policy advocacy focused on criminal legal system issues and public safety at the local and national levels. Dr. Jackson’s three key focal areas of research are 1) the impact of police interactions on youth and families, 2) the escalation and persistence of these experiences to state-sanctioned violence (e.g., police violence), both historically and presently, and 3) how these experiences impact how people come to understand the criminal legal system and how they prepare for interactions with punitive actors as a result. Dr. Jackson is a Fulbright Scholar, earned a Ph.D. in Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis, an MSW from the University of Chicago, and a BS in Administration of Justice from George Mason University. |
| Eunho ChaEunho Cha is a Ph.D. candidate at the Columbia School of Social Work. Her research aims to understand the role of public policies in improving the lives of families and children, with a focus on mitigating work-care instability and conflicts. She utilizes theories and methods from both economics and developmental psychology to explore parental decisions regarding work and child care arrangements, and their implications for children’s development. Her Ph.D. dissertation examines early childhood education and care policies in the United States,emphasizing their effects on the preschool enrollment gap, mothers’ employment, families’ economic well-being, and children’s development. Currently, She is involved in the Early Childhood Poverty Tracker project, a longitudinal study tracking the lives of New York City families with young children. She was born and raised in South Korea and earned her B.A. in Economics and Social Welfare and her M.A.in Social Welfare from Seoul National University. In her free time, she enjoys learning ballet. |
| Jessica M. CraigJessica M. Craig, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of North Texas. Her research interests include juvenile justice and developmental/life course criminology. For instance, she has focused on the role of child maltreatment and other traumatic events in predicting delinquent and criminal behavior. She is also interested in the role of protective factors that may diminish the consequences of these adverse experiences. Her other research projects have centered on delinquency, testing criminological theories, and the use of advanced research methodologies. Some of her recent work has been published in Child Abuse & Neglect, Journal of Criminal Justice, Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology, and Crime & Delinquency. |
| Kayla E. Stange-BacherKayla E. Stange-Bacher is an in-flight doctoral student at Florida State University majoring in Human Development and Family Science. Stange-Bacher graduated with her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Meredith College in Raleigh, NC. During her educational career at Florida State University, Stange-Bacher has served as a graduate research assistant, graduate teaching assistant, and Instructor of Record (IOR). Currently, Stange-Bacher’s research interests involve parent-child relationships and its influences on childhood anxious symptoms. |
| Meingold ChanMeingold Chan is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, funded by the CIHR postdoctoral fellowship. She received a PhD in Human Development and Family Science at The Ohio State University and MPhil in Social and Developmental Psychology at the University of Cambridge. Taking a biopsychosocial and multicultural perspective, her research program focuses on the role of familial and sociocultural contexts on children’s socioemotional development and the biological embedding of these contexts reflected by epigenetics, influencing long-term health. More specifically, she is interested in the link between family emotional socialization, parenting, early life stress, and child outcomes, including socioemotional adjustment, DNA methylation, and epigenetic aging, across contexts. Her work also addresses measurement and methodological issues in psychological, cross-cultural, and biosocial research. |
| Zixiaojie (Jill) YangZixiaojie (Jill) Yang, PhD, MSW, is a Postdoctoral Scholar with the Social Justice Institute at Case Western Reserve University. Jill’s research focuses on justice system-involved youth and their families, juvenile justice reform policies and practices, police training in procedural justice, and community building and engagement. She has practice experience in working on resentencing cases and reentry processes with individuals sentenced to juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences. Jill has been actively involved in community service and working with marginalized urban groups on community organizing and juvenile justice reform advocacy. As an instructor, she has taught in the areas of social justice and social work, including Human Behavior in the Social Environment and Critical Social Work in Multicultural Society. She is the current instructor for SJUS 100: Introduction to Social Justice for CWRU undergraduate students.Jill received her Master's degree in Social Work from the University of Chicago in 2017 and completed her PhD at Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois Chicago in 2022. |
| Xuejie DingXuejie Ding is a Senior Research Fellow at Oxford in Berlin and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and the Einstein Center Population Diversity. She received her DPhil in Sociology from the University of Oxford in 2018. Xuejie has a diverse background in interdisciplinary research, focusing on sociology, demography, sociogenomics, and public health. Her research aims to advance the understanding of health inequalities by integrating sociological theories with approaches from biology, molecular genetics, and medical sciences. Currently, her research focuses on how family diversity influences children’s educational outcomes, particularly through health-related channels. Specifically, she is interested in how sleep, biomarkers, and polygenic scores affect the relationship between family diversity and children’s outcomes. This makes the FFCWS dataset a valuable resource for her, as it contains comprehensive variables that align with her research interests. |
| Sayaka AwaoSayaka Awao is a Developmental Psychology PhD student at the University of Maryland, College Park. She works in the Maryland Child and Family Development Laboratory. Her research interests include the role of parenting in child development, how children overcome life challenges, the impact of parental loss on children, and individual and cultural differences. She recently defended her master's thesis titled "Childhood Bereavement and Internalizing Symptoms: Relationship quality as a mechanism and early attachment security as a buffer" utilizing the Future of Families data. |
| Amanda DorseyAmanda Dorsey is a PhD student in Epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her doctoral training specializes in perinatal epidemiology, with a focus on congenital malformations and developmental disabilities. Her experience spans multiple sectors, including academic research at institutions like the Emory Center for Spina Bifida Prevention and non-profit work with ReachAnother Foundation, which addresses neural tube defects prevention and treatment in Ethiopia. She also collaborates with the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, supporting the efforts of their Prenatal Substance Exposure Surveillance and Research Team as a contractor epidemiologist. Her decision to pursue public health was fueled by observations of global disparities in infant and child outcomes surveillance, and her professional goal is to rewrite this script. |
| Yunung LeeYunung Lee is a PhD candidate at McGill University's School of Social Work and an FRQ-SC scholar in Quebec, Canada. Her research interests encompass the intersections of higher education and social mobility, the psychosocial well-being and identity formation of individuals experiencing class migration, and the interplay between the human psyche, interpersonal dynamics, and macro-structural historical forces. Yunung is also deeply committed to decolonizing psychological knowledge and practices in the Chinese-speaking world, including her hometown of Taiwan. Her current dissertation investigates the factors that promote and hinder educational upward mobility among first-generation college students in the United States. She is developing predictive models to understand the developmental trajectories and to identify factors that lead to improved educational, socioeconomic, and psychosocial outcomes among lower-income, minoritized populations in North America. |
| Jenn SomersJenn Somers (she/her/hers) is an incoming Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology at Auburn University. Before starting at Auburn, Jenn completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA and earned her doctorate in clinical psychology at Arizona State University. Her research interest is in biobehavioral processes through which close relationships support or hinder psychological adjustment, especially among families facing socioeconomic disadvantage and contextual adversities. In recognition of the profound interdependence between children and their caregivers, her research employs advanced quantitative and multimodal methods to characterize within-dyad processes by which caregivers and children influence and are influenced by each other’s functioning. By evaluating bidirectional influences between children and their caregivers across multiple timescales (e.g., second-by-second processes that occur during social interactions, longer-term adaptation that unfolds across development), this research provides a framework for characterizing the effects of early social experiences on children’s development, which bears implications for both children and their caregiver’s wellbeing. |
| F. Kubra AytacF. Kubra Aytac is a PhD candidate in Psychology and a member of the Children and Parents Lab at The Ohio State University. Ms. Aytac graduated summa cum laude from Middle East Technical University in 2015, where she majored in Sociology with a double major degree in Philosophy and a minor degree in Political Science and Public Administration. She holds three M.S. degrees: Psychology (OSU 23’), Psychology (METU 19’), and Sociology (METU 18’). Her master’s thesis about maternal gatekeeping received the “METU Best Thesis of the Year Award”. Her primary research interests are adult attachment, coparenting, couple relationships, and mental health. |
| Elizabeth KwonDr. Elizabeth Kwon is an Assistant Professor in the department of public health at Baylor University. She completed her MA and PhD at Indiana University in Bloomington. Her research focuses on the interplay among biological, psychological, and social factors that drive risky behaviors and mental health challenges. Specifically, her current research investigates how childhood adversity affects one’s physiological reaction to stress and development of addiction vulnerabilities (e.g., emotion dysregulation, impulsivity) among adolescents. She is interested in psychological protective factors such as resilience, self-control, and emotion regulation. She uses a quantitative methodology to model longitudinal developmental pathways linking early life stress with adverse behavioral or mental health outcomes. |
| Amanda SatherAmanda Sather, is a first-year Ph.D. student at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, where she is currently working under Dr. Kari Adamsons. Her primary research focuses on examining how parent-child relationships and parenting behaviors influence adolescent substance use and risky behaviors. She is particularly interested in how parents socialize their children around substances through whether they use substances, how they talk about substances, and the context in which it is used. Finally, she is interested in identifying the different factors that determine why some children of substance users adopt their parents’ behaviors and other children do not. The Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study provides longitudinal data with both parent-reported and child-reported measures to allow for the examination of my research questions. Up until now, she has primarily utilized the year nine and year 15 waves in the dataset in different research projects, but she looks forward to further exploring the new year 22 data, along with the earlier waves of data. She looks forward to attending the workshop and gaining the skills and knowledge necessary to further utilize the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study data. |
| Olivia D. ChangOlivia D. Chang, LLMSW, is a PhD student in the Joint Social Work and Developmental Psychology program at the University of Michigan. She holds a Master of Social Work in Interpersonal Practice from the University of Michigan School of Social Work. Her clinical practice areas include supporting youth who have experienced trauma, complex family systems, and culturally responsive treatment. She is a recipient of a predoctoral fellowship funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Her research aims to understand the developmental processes and contexts that strengthen vulnerable families, leverage community-based interventions to prevent child maltreatment, and promote the biopsychosocial health of youth within child welfare. |
| Elizabeth Jurczak GoldsboroughElizabeth Jurczak Goldsborough is a licensed social worker (NY and NJ) and a PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work. Her research focuses on tobacco and substance use, including treatment. She is exploring the relationship between smoking and food insecurity using the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) data. She holds BA and MSW degrees from Rutgers University. Drawing from her experiences as a first-generation college student and immigrant, Elizabeth is committed to diversity and inclusion in academia. Through her research, she aims to inform public health and social work interventions. |
| KJ Davidson-TurnerKJ Davidson-Turner is a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin and a trainee at the Population Research Center. Her research interests broadly revolve around aging, stress, and health disparities. Her dissertation focuses on developing a biosocial understanding of women’s health by examining the variations of menopausal experiences and health across socio demographic groups. |
| Alyssa TalaugonAlyssa Talaugon is a doctoral student in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University. Her research broadly focuses on the causes and consequences of violence, delinquency, and institutional involvement over the life-course, with a particular focus on familial influences. Currently, Alyssa is interested in examining and identifying sources of variation in the implications of victimization, early delinquency, and justice system involvement on life-course trajectories. |
| Deonté HughesDeonté Hughes is a doctoral student in the Sociology department at the University of Maryland, College Park. Deonté’s research interests include Black families, stress, adaptation, welfare, race, racism, inequality, and familial relationships. Deonté’s primary research centers on Black families, what stressors or stressful events they experience, how Black families respond to that stress, what resources they use or do not use, and how policies and laws affect how Black families experience and respond to those stressors. Deonté is also interested in exploring the ways in which racism contributes to racial inequalities in family outcomes broadly. Through his research, Deonté aims to identify the mechanisms through which racism impacts Black families, and propose potential pathways that various social and economic policies could be reformed for the betterment of Black families. |
| Tejaswi ThapaTejaswi Thapa is an M.S. student in Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health. She is working alongside. Dr. Lea and Dr. George Pro on legal cynicism and mental health outcomes utilizing the Future of Families dataset and hopes to bring back further insights from this workshop for their research project. She is also working on a small project on gun violence alongside Dr. Nora Gross and will begin an internship for the surveillance of health impacts of the criminal legal system at the NYC health department for the summer. |
| Emily LemonEmily Lemon, PhD, MPH is a Guatemalan-American social and behavioral scientist dedicated to community-based and community-driven research and intervention to promote health equity in Latinx and immigrant populations. As health equity researcher, she applies mixed-methods research approaches to explore and address the impacts of immigration enforcement policy on Latinx mental health. She uses YPAR as a research and intervention tool to examine community strengths and address policy gaps to promote youth resilience by developing critical consciousness, creating sanctuary space, and strengthening ethnic identity in Latinx youth. As an Assistant Professor at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health based in the Rio Grande Valley, Dr. Lemon is expanding her research to border communities and migrant youth impacted by immigration enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border. |
| Yeqing LiYeqing Li is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Human Development and Family Studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research centers on the influence of familial factors, such as parenting beliefs and behaviors, on child development. She contributed to research in both the Chinese and US contexts. |
| Olivia Martín-PiñónOlivia Martín-Piñón is a doctoral candidate in Human Development and Family Science at Auburn University. She holds a master’s degree from Auburn University and a bachelor’s from Southwestern University. Olivia’s research aims to understand the interplay between parenting practices and child and adolescent bioregulatory processes, such as autonomic nervous system functioning and sleep. She is especially interested in how the experience of economic stress affects these associations. Olivia has worked in both basic and applied contexts, including multiple NIH-funded projects, a community sleep intervention, and translational research on early literacy. Olivia has expertise in psychophysiology data collection and analysis, data management, and multiple quantitative methodologies. Her published work can be found in Developmental Psychobiology, Child Development, and Sleep Medicine, among others. Outside of research, Olivia’s advocacy focuses on students with disabilities and graduate student employment. |
| Cassandra BolarCassandra Bolar's Ph.D. research utilizes an ecological approach to understand how contextual factors impact father involvement, intimate relationships, and familial functioning in the African American Community. She currently serves as a Co-Investigator for the National African American Child and Family Research Center and Assistant Professor at the University of West Georgia. Clinically, she is passionate about serving couples through therapy and relationship education, and she created the Marriage Head Start premarital curriculum. She currently serves as a psychology professor at the University of West Georgia. She received her bachelor’s degree in Child and Family Development from the University of Georgia and her master’s and doctoral degrees in Human Development and Family Studies from Auburn University. She holds a Certified Family Life Educator credential from the National Council on Family Relations. |
| Hunmin ChaHunmin Cha is a first-year doctoral student in the College of Social Work at the Ohio State University. She is a research assistant at the Child and Family Wellbeing Laboratory. She received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Regina and her Master of Social Welfare from Yonsei University. She aims to promote child well-being and strengthen families by exploring family- and system-level factors. Her current research explores the impact of father involvement, the child welfare system, and social welfare policies on child well-being outcomes. |
| Myriam CasseusMyriam Casseus, PhD, MPH, MA, has earned a doctorate in public health and master’s degrees in psychology and public health. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Rutgers Transdisciplinary Program in Primary Care Research in the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School’s Department of Pediatrics. Her primary research interests include epidemiology, substance use, health and health care disparities, and disability – particularly among pediatric populations. Much of Dr. Casseus’s research leverages large nationally representative datasets to examine health and health care disparities among children and adolescents with special health care needs. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including The Journal of Pediatrics, Autism, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Journal of Adolescent Health, Disability and Health Journal, Addictive Behaviors, and Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. |
| Tajammal YasinTajammal Yasin is a doctoral student in social work at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he is passionate about child and family well-being. His research focuses on preventing and reducing family adversity, and he is particularly interested in the long-term impact of both childhood and adult adversity on parents and their children. Through his dissertation and future research, he aims to explore the role of risk and protective factors in mitigating these challenges and promoting positive family outcomes. In addition to his academic pursuits, he leverages his research expertise to inform child and family well-being initiatives, like the Wisconsin Community Safety Fund project. His experience as a researcher and educator positions him to effectively utilize data resources like the Future of Families and Child Well-being study to improve the lives of children and families. |
| Luci GiorgioDr. Luci Giorgio is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama School of Social Work. She is a social and behavioral health researcher with expertise in sleep health and health equity among racial/ethnic minoritized populations and women. Her current research investigates how psychosocial factors, such as stress and social relationships, influence sleep and cardiovascular health among Latina/o/x adults using quantitative and qualitative methods. She has two ongoing, community-engaged projects examining how family stress and support impact sleep outcomes among Latina women living in Alabama. Luci received her MSW and PhD from Columbia University School of Social Work and her BA in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. |
| Guyu (Sylvia) SunGuyu (Sylvia) Sun is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests center on the intersection of school contexts, juvenile justice involvement, delinquency, and other individual outcomes. She is also interested in labeling theory and network analysis. Guyu received her Bachelor of Social Sciences degree in Sociology from the University of Macau. Her previous work has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Crime & Delinquency, Policing and Society, Asian Journal of Criminology, and Asian Journal of Law and Society. |
| Bisola DuyileBisola Duyile, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Counseling at Montclair State University. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor (DC), a Board Certified-TeleMental Health Provider, and a National Certified Rehabilitation Counselor. She has experience working with families and individuals with disabilities. Dr. Duyile’s research examines how social determinants of health factors influence family functioning, resilience, and mental health concerns. She explores equity and the lived experiences of families of children with developmental disabilities and the impactful role of counselors and counselor educators. |
| Jeesoo JungJeesoo Jung is a PhD student in Social Welfare at the State University of New York at Albany (SUNY Albany). Jeesoo is a licensed social worker with research interests focusing on trauma and resilience in at-risk populations. Jeesoo has worked with children and families involved in the child welfare system and people with disabilities. She has also participated in research projects around urgent social issues, such as refugee crises, digital literacy, disasters, and collective trauma. She holds a Master of Social Work degree from SUNY Albany and a BA in Social Welfare, a Bachelor of Communication and Media, and an MA in Social Economy from Ewha Womans University. |
| Betül UrgancıBetül Urgancı is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Koç University. She received her Ph.D. in Human Development from Cornell University. Her research centers on close relationship development and changes over time, with a particular focus on the protective and risk factors of relationship dissolution. |
| P'trice JonesP’trice Jones is a fifth-year doctoral candidate at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on gender-based violence and police violence, with particular attention to how constructions of race and gender impact crime perpetration and victimization. She also explores outcomes across different racial and gender groups. |