People

Kate Adams

Kate Adams, B.A. (she/her) is the Lab Manager for the Lab for Youth Mental Health and the Project Coordinator for the SMILE project at Harvard University. She is originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received her B.A. in Psychology from the...

Joseph Appiah

Joseph Appiah is a research assistant in the lab. He received his bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Ghana. His research interests include social cognition, stereotypes, and intergroup relations. Joseph plans to pursue a PhD in...

Peju Bobbett

Peju Bobbett (she/her) is a Research Assistant in the Lab for Youth Mental Health. She graduated from Wheaton College with a B.A. in International Relations and Spanish, holds her Ed.M. in Human Development and Education from Harvard Graduate School of...

Harry Ding

Harry Ding is an undergraduate student researcher in the Lab for Youth Mental Health as a BLISS fellow. He is originally from South Carolina and is a current sophomore at Harvard concentrating in statistics and health policy. His research interests...

Hannah Girma

Hannah (she/her/hers) is a research assistant at the Lab for Youth Mental Health. She is originally from Massachusetts and is currently a sophomore at Harvard College intending to concentrate in psychology and sociology. She became interested in...

Stephanie Hernandez

Stephanie is an assessor on the FIRST project and is currently a senior at UC San Diego majoring in clinical psychology. Her research interests include investigating the implementation and dissemination of evidence-based interventions in community mental...

Sakshi Khurana, M.A.

Sakshi Khurana is a doctoral student at Alaska Pacific University, and a Research Fellow in the Weisz Lab for Youth Mental Health at Harvard University. Her current work in the Lab is as a Project Director for an IES-funded meta-analysis project on the...

Lauren Mei

Lauren Mei is an undergraduate student researcher in the Lab for Youth Mental Health and BLISS fellow. She is originally from Southern California and is a current senior at Harvard concentrating in Psychology and Cognitive Science with a secondary in Art...

Christina Nguyen

Christina Nguyen (she/her) is a graduate research fellow in the Lab for Youth Mental Health, where she currently supports the SMILE project. She was also previously a part of Harvard’s 2025 PPREP mentorship program. She is originally from Southern...

Malena A. Nygaard, Ph.D.

Malena A. Nygaard, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Lab for Youth Mental Health in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. She Co-Directs a randomized clinical trial of the FIRST treatment protocol (Weisz & Bearman, 2020) and provides...

Julie Petersen, Ph.D.

Julie Petersen, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral fellow and project director of the Youth FIRST Study in the Lab for Youth Mental Health. She earned her bachelor's degree in psychology from Haverford College, and her master's and Ph.D. in clinical and counseling...

Divya Saravanan

Divya Saravanan (she/her) is an undergraduate research assistant in the Lab for Youth Mental Health. She is from Farmington, Connecticut, and is currently pursuing a degree in psychology at Wellesley College. She is interested in advancements of mental...