Shannon Savell is a clinical psychology PhD student in the Psychology Dept. at UVa. She received her B.A. and M.A. in Psychology from the University of Virginia. Her clinical interests include using evidence based practices from a strengths-based and person-centered approach to support mental health concerns. She incorporates evidence based practices from Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to manage symptoms of adjustment distress, depression, anxiety, grief, and trauma, as well as family and relationship concerns, and identity-related concerns for racially and ethnically marginalized students and LGBTQIA+ individuals.
Shannon’s research aims to investigate how positive romantic relationship functioning, positive parenting practices, such as limit setting, proactive parenting, monitoring and positive behavior support, and positive caregiver-child relationship quality, characterized by warmth, support and communication, can ameliorate the negative impact of a variety of adverse events for children. Her previous and ongoing work investigates how adverse influences and events from the individual level to the macrosystem level of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model impact child behavior and how positive parenting practices and caregiver-child relationship quality intervene to promote healthy child development from toddlerhood through adolescence.
Dr. Melvin Wilson's academic, research, and training activities generally focus on understanding contextual processes and outcomes and conducting parental interventions in low-income, ethnic minority families. Specifically, he has conducted analyses on young, low-income, unwed, and nonresident fathers and their involvement with their children. In addition, he is interested in developing intervention protocols aimed at helping young men meet family responsibilities and involvements. Currently, Dr. Wilson is conducting a preventive intervention involving low-income families with toddlers at-risk for conduct disorder.
Biography: My research focuses on children, families, and psychological processes of special importance to families such as adopting a systems perspective, grieving relationship loss, emotional pain, and parenting across two homes. I also am interested in different methods for studying related topics, including genetically-informed designs, instrument development, creative coding systems, and secondary analysis of large, representative data sets. I maintain longstanding interests in applied topics related to family conflicts that affect children and involve legal/policy issues. These interests include the consequences of divorce for children, child custody disputes, divorce mediation, and how children are affected by parental conflict. In addition to my empirical work, I write about and work on these issues in broader ways in my roles as Director of the Center for Children, Families, and the Law, Social Science Editor of Family Court Review, and in writing for the public, for example, my recent book for parents, Two Homes, One Childhood: A Parenting Plan to Last a Lifetime or opinion pieces in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/opinion/sunday/how-divorced-parents-lost-their-rights.html?_r=0 and Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2016/09/08/a-divorce-mediator-answers-can-divorced-parents-just-act-like-parents/
Jess completed a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry with an emphasis in Biochemistry at Richard Stockton College in 1997. As a graduate student, she had the unique experience of training with two professors, both well–established in the field of epigenetics. In 1997, she began her training in Dr. John Lucchesi’s lab, where she studied the epigenetic aspects of dosage compensation in Drosophila melanogaster. She moved to Stony Brook University in the summer of 1999 and completed her PhD in 2004 under the mentorship of a yeast epigeneticist, Dr. Rolf Sternglanz. Jess’s PhD thesis pursued her interest in the histone code by characterizing a domain (BAH domain) that resides within proteins involved in regulating transcription through chromatin compaction. Jess was a postdoc at the Duke Center for Human Genetics from 2004-2008. Her postdoctoral work allowed her to explore the fields of human genetics and genomics. She trained under Dr. Elizabeth Hauser, a human statistical geneticist, and Dr. Simon G. Gregory, a human genomicist. It was while working under the direction of Dr. Gregory that she began projects that focus on the methylation state of the oxytocin receptor.
Dr. Llewellyn is the director of the Mary Ainsworth Training Clinic at UVa.
Her research interests broadly defined are health psychology, personality assessment, and women's issues. Specifically, past research projects have centered on AIDS prevention in Nigeria, eating disorders, and personality correlates of medical professionals. Current research includes the use of treatment outcome measures in training therapists and assessment issues in Augmentative and Alternative Communication
Dr. Pelphrey is a leader in groundbreaking research on autism, using brain science to develop biologically based tools for detecting and tailoring treatments for individuals on the autism spectrum. He has had extensive experience teaching and conducting research at leading institutions like Carnegie Mellon, Duke, and Yale. Most recently, Pelphrey served as the Carbonell Family Professor in Autism & Neurodevelopmental Disorders at George Washington University, as well as the founding director of the Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute.
Julia Pan
Julia Pan is a neuroscience major undergraduate student at UVA.
