skip to main content
PANDAA Lab
University of Mississippi

Graduate Students

Hannah Friedman (CV) is a sixth-year student in the Clinical Psychology program at Ole Miss. Hannah graduated from Emory University in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. While at Emory, she conducted her Honors Thesis on the etiology of and etiological overlap among social anxiety, shyness, and extraversion in youth. She completed her M.A. degree at the University of Mississippi in 2021. Hannah’s research interests pertain to understanding the intergenerational transmission of anxiety, the role of parental accommodation in the maintenance of youth anxiety disorders, and cognitive vulnerabilities in the development and maintenance of parent and adolescent anxiety.

 

Maxwell Luber (CV) is a fifth-year student in the Clinical Psychology program at Ole Miss. Max graduated from Temple University in 2015 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. While at Temple University, he was an undergraduate research assistant in the Child and Adolescent Anxiety Disorders Clinic with Dr. Philip Kendall, working on studies that examined long-term outcomes of different types of treatments for childhood anxiety. Before coming to Ole Miss, Max held several post-baccalaureate Research Coordinator positions. At the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, Max worked in two labs: one focusing on the treatment of tics and Tourette’s disorder with Dr. Barbara Coffey and another in MRI research that focused on understanding the underlying risk, disease, expression, and resilience of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with Dr. Sophia Frangou. After leaving NYC, Max moved to Nashville to work in the Emotion and Anxiety Research Lab at Vanderbilt university as a Research Analyst, with the primary role to serve as student coordinator for Dr. Bunmi Olatunji’s R21 study, which explored disgust as a distinct OCD endophenotype.

Max’s current research interests are in the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms associated with the maintenance and treatment of anxiety and related disorders.

 

Evan Rooney (CV) is a fifth-year student in the Clinical Psychology program at Ole Miss. Evan graduated from the State University of New York at Geneseo (SUNY Geneseo) in 2014 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. While at SUNY Geneseo, Evan served as an undergraduate research assistant in the Center for Research on Human Development and Adaptation with Dr. Michael Lynch, working on studies that examined the influence of coping flexibility on stress management and used a daily diary design to examine the associations between daily stress, associated coping efforts, and mental health. Prior to his graduate training at the University of Mississippi, Evan worked as a post-baccalaureate research coordinator at multiple institutions. At the University of Rochester’s Mt. Hope Family Center, Evan served as the research coordinator on a NIDA funded study examining the role of childhood maltreatment on drug use in late adolescence and emerging adulthood with Dr. Fred Rogosch. Additionally, Evan served as the research coordinator for the Trauma and Grief Center at Texas Children’s Hospital with Dr. Julie Kaplow. In this position, Evan coordinated data collection, management, and reporting across multiple projects funded by SAMHSA and numerous foundation grants. These projects sought to integrate clinical and research endeavors in the provision of trauma and grief-informed treatment in the greater Houston, TX area, as well as during the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and the Santa Fe High School shooting.

Evan’s current research interests focus on risk and resilience factors among youth and young adults with negative life experiences (e.g., childhood maltreatment, catastrophic medical diagnoses, and trauma exposure), such as coping strategies, social support, and religiousness. Additionally, his research has also focused on the dissemination of psychometrically sound instruments for the assessment of trauma symptoms among youth.

 

Kayce Hopper (CV) is a fourth-year student in the Clinical Psychology program at Ole Miss. Kayce graduated from the College of Charleston in 2018 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. While at the College of Charleston, she completed her Senior Thesis, Negative Incentive Shifts in Food Reward Produce Ethanol Consumption in Rats, with Dr. Chad Galuska. After graduating from the College of Charleston, her Senior Thesis was incorporated into a manuscript, which she co-authored, titled Effects of Negative Incentive Shifts in Food Reward on Rats’ Consumption of Concurrent Ethanol Solutions. During her time as a post-baccalaureate, she was a research assistant at the Anxiety and Addictive Behaviors Lab and Clinic at Louisiana State University as well as an Applied Behavioral Analysis line technician at the Gulfsouth Autism Center in Baton Rouge, LA. Kayce’s research interests pertain to understanding how variables, such as distress tolerance, parental relationships, and anxiety sensitivity, mediate the relationship between anxiety and substance use in adolescents and young adults.

 

Leila Sachner (CV) is a third-year student in the Clinical Psychology program at Ole Miss. Leila graduated from the University of Virginia in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. While at UVA, she was an undergraduate research assistant in the Program for Anxiety, Cognition, and Treatment Lab with Dr. Bethany Teachman, working on studies that examined online cognitive bias modification interventions for anxious individuals. After graduation, Leila completed a Post-Baccalaureate Clinical Fellowship at the Simches Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. During this fellowship, Leila taught and implemented DBT with adolescents struggling with emotion dysregulation, self-injury, and suicidal ideation. She also worked in the Emotion Regulation, Family Transactions, and Trauma Lab with Dr. Alan Fruzzetti, examining family systems and outcomes of residential DBT treatment. Leila’s current research interests are in the role of validation on anxiety, emotion regulation, and parent-adolescent relationships.

 

Gabrielle Armstrong (CV) is a first-year student in the Clinical Psychology program at Ole Miss. Gabrielle graduated from Ole Miss in 2022 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. While at Ole Miss, she conducted her Honors Thesis on the interaction between anxiety sensitivity and sleep disturbance in relation to alcohol use among adolescents. Before returning to Ole Miss, Gabrielle held a post-baccalaureate Research Coordinator position at Baylor College of Medicine in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences under the supervision of Dr. Eric Storch in Houston, Texas. In this role, Gabrielle was an influential contributor across two ongoing, large-scale OCD-genotyping studies, a longitudinal study tracking mental health symptoms among youth in Texas to facilitate treatment, and the OCD clinic where she was responsible for conducting supervised, clinician-administered assessments with new patients presenting for care. Gabrielle’s research interests include examining the causality of co-morbid substance use and internalizing psychopathology within psychosocial and contextual factors, particularly among historically excluded groups.