Meet the Lab

As a graduate student in the Youth Risk and Resilience Lab, I am primarily interested in research on child maltreatment, particularly within youth in foster care. I also have an interest in prevention and intervention efforts related to child maltreatment. In addition to my own research, I work with the undergraduate research assistants on current lab projects. After graduation, I hope to continue doing work related to child maltreatment and trauma.
 
Selected Publication:
Bennett, A., Jackson, Y., & Gabrielli, J. (2023). A social network analysis of perpetrators of child maltreatment reported by youth in foster care. Child Abuse & Neglect, 145, 106432.

Shimei (she/her) is an advanced graduate student who joined the Youth Risk and Resilience Lab in 2021. In the lab, she is interested in leveraging social media and digital tools to 1) identify modifiable socio-ecological risk and protective factors for youth health behaviors (e.g., substance use, help-seeking) and 2) co-develop culturally responsive intervention and prevention programs for risky behavior. Her overarching research aim is to improve access to mental health care for all youth and families by applying participatory methods that help increase the inclusion of minoritized populations in clinical health research. Everyone, including those who meet her through an online lab biography, promptly discover that she calls Alief, Texas home, and that her name is pronounced like the dance move.
 
Selected Publication:
Corcoran, E., Wydra, N., Tejada, N., Nelapati, S., & Gabrielli, J. (2023). A moderated mediation model of the relationship between adolescent screentime, online privacy cognitions and exposure to online substance marketing. Child & Family Social Work.

Alex Clement, M.S. is an advanced graduate student in the Youth Risk and Resilience Lab. He graduated from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Sociology. Following graduation he gained experience as a case manager working with low income adults in East Tennessee and Appalachia with opioid use disorder and as a research assistant at the Center for Behavioral Health Research under the guidance of Drs. Michael Mason and Douglas Coatsworth. Alex’s research interests include the impact of adverse childhood experiences, the interaction of youth and media, child and adolescent substance use behavior, and mHealth intervention development and implementation.

Selected Publication:
Clement, A., Ravet, M., Stanger, C., & Gabrielli, J. (2024). Feasibility, usability, and acceptability of MobileCoach-Teen: A smartphone app-based preventative intervention for risky adolescent drinking behavior. Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment, 159, 209275.

Hello! I’m Mariah Ravet [m-rye-ah ruh-vay], hailing from Marinette, Wisconsin. I am a graduate research assistant in the YRR Lab. My current research interests include early life stress, adverse childhood experiences, substance use, and risky behaviors. In addition to research, I enjoy planting seeds and gardening, sewing fanny packs, bicycling, daydreaming about having enough pets to call a small zoo, and raising farm animals (although not in Gainesville).
 
Selected Publication:
Bennett, A., Ravet, M., & Gabrielli, J. A Systematic Review of Social Support Interventions for Youth in Foster Care. Available at SSRN 4750788.

I am a graduate student in the Youth Risk and Resilience Lab, with primary research interests in childhood maltreatment and health risk behaviors in marginalized adolescent populations. In addition to my research interests, my clinical interests include trauma, resilience, and parent-child relationship dynamics.
 
Sarah is currently working on a publication examining disability-related maltreatment

I began my graduate training at the University of Florida in 2024, with primary research interests in youth risk behavior prevention, mobile health tools, and media parenting interventions. Prior to this, I worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the Youth Risk and Resilience lab supporting qualitative content coding, conducting interviews with teens about substance content in the media, and assisting my lab mates with other ongoing research tasks. I have also gained experience writing abstracts, drafting manuscript sections, and presenting posters at regional and national conferences throughout my time with the Youth Risk and Resilience Lab.
 
Selected Publication:
Corcoran, E., Wydra, N., Tejada, N., Nelapati, S., & Gabrielli, J. (2023). A moderated mediation model of the relationship between adolescent screentime, online privacy cognitions and exposure to online substance marketing. Child & Family Social Work.

As an undergraduate research assistant in the Youth Risk and Resilience Lab, I assist with qualitative NVivo coding, Qualtrics survey assembling, collecting data for studies/projects through mobile application testing, and conducting literature reviews. I am currently conducting my own research project studying working patterns and parent/child relationships during Covid-19. After graduation, I plan to apply to Industrial/Organizational Psychology graduate programs.

As a research assistant I assist Dr. Gabrielli and the graduate students with ongoing research tasks for active projects, such as content coding in NVivo and helping conduct literature reviews. I also conduct my own research project, and gain experience with other research activities. After graduation, I plan to take a year to gain more research experience, and then I intend to apply to Clinical Psychology Ph.D. programs.

I am a third year Psychology major at the University of Florida. As an undergraduate research assistant, I assist Dr. Gabrielli and the graduate students with ongoing research tasks including qualitative data coding in NVivo, literature searches for grant applications and manuscripts, and abstract writing for poster presentations. After graduation, I plan to apply to Clinical Psychology Ph.D. programs.

As an undergraduate research assistant, I contribute to lab tasks including literature searches for manuscripts and grant applications, data coding in NVivo, and measurement development. I have also assisted with drafting and submitting poster publication abstracts to the Society for Research in Child Development 2021 Biennial Conference. I am interested in researching the effects of parental maltreatment and parental substance abuse on minority and at-risk youth. Next year, I will begin applying to Clinical Psychology Ph.D. programs that offer an emphasis in child clinical psychology.

I am a Psychology major at the University of Florida. As an undergraduate research assistant in the YRR lab, I have helped with content coding images, song lyrics, and TikTok videos uploaded by youth concerning their exposure to alcohol-related matters and other lab tasks. I have an invested interest in child maltreatment and crisis intervention and hope to further this study under Dr. Gabrielli’s mentorship. I plan on pursuing a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology upon graduation.  

Erin Corcoran finished her graduate training under the mentorship of Dr. Gabrielli in the Clinical and Health Psychology Program in 2024. Her dissertation was titled, “Understanding adolescent in-vivo exposure to vaping and cannabis content in the media” and she contributed to and lead many of the early projects within the lab. She completed her internship at the Charleston Consortium Psychology Internship Program and will be continuing on to postdoctoral training in New York City.  
 
Selected Publication: 
Corcoran, E., Wydra, N., Tejada, N., Nelapati, S., & Gabrielli, J. (2023). A moderated mediation model of the relationship between adolescent screentime, online privacy cognitions and exposure to online substance marketing. Child & Family Social Work. 

Athitheya graduated with a major in computer science from the University of Florida in 2024. As a research assistant, his contributions primarily included automating data management and data retrieval tasks with Python scripts. He has also created a web application as an interface for a data management task, contributed to a WordPress website, and used unsupervised Machine Learning models to group unlabeled text snippets.  Following his work in the Youth Risk and Resilience Lab, Athith began a master’s degree program in computer science at Columbia University.

I graduated from UF with a Bachelor’s in Public Health in 2024. My role as an undergraduate research assistant involves supporting the lab with tasks for various projects with most of my work focused on the role of media in adolescent risk behavior. In the future, I will be applying to medical school with an interest in working with low socioeconomic populations and increasing equal access to healthcare resources. 

I graduated from UF as a Health Science major with a minor in Public Health in 2024. I conducted an honors thesis project on media parenting as it relates to youth substance use. As an undergraduate research assistant, I also assisted with various projects in the lab, and I have an interest in online initiatives to minimize youth risk behaviors. In the future I plan to apply for medical school.

Emily Baker completed an honor’s thesis at the University of Florida examining COVID impacts on family functioning. She went on to obtain her Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology at New York University after her graduation from UF.

Following graduation from the University of Florida, Timbria Burke went on to graduate study in genetic counseling at Boston University. She received the prestigious Warren Alpert Scholarship in recognition of her potential and prior experiences. 

Farwah Zaidi obtained an internship in User Experience Research following her graduation from the University of Florida. She plans to expand upon her training in digital interventions to improve the technology experience for users.

Rachel Walton was selected as a University Research Scholar during her undergraduate training at UF.  She went on to obtain her Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology at George Washington University and hopes to continue her work with underserved populations.