Project Director |
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Claudio Toppelberg, MD
Principal Investigator
Dr. Toppelberg is a Harvard-trained child and adult psychiatrist and researcher with expertise in the interface of normal and delayed language development with child and adolescent emotional/behavioral development and mental disorders. He has clinical expertise in evaluating and treating children, adolescents and adults who suffer from depression, anxiety, ADHD, disruptive behavior and other developmental and psychiatric disorders, and in particular those who have communication or language deficits and language-based and other learning disabilities.
Dr. Toppelberg's Personal Page
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Project Staff
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Brian Collins, MA
Research Coordinator
Former bilingual educator in the Boston Public Schools, Brian is responsible for training and is the direct supervisor of research assistants. Brian interactes with school staff and study participants, attending to the specific principles of cultural sensitivity/competence requisite for this research project. Brian is a bilingual/ bicultural individual with experience working with children and families from the same ethnic and sociodemographic groups that we study longitudinally.
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Alfonso Nieto-Castañón, PhD
Data Analyst and Statistician
Dr. Nieto is in charge of database management and data analysis, and provides direct supervision in this area. Dr. Nieto received his doctorate in the Cognitive and Neural Systems Department, Boston University. He also has a BS degree in Telecommunications Engineering and a background as a research engineer (Center for the Development of Telecommunications in Castilla y León, Valladolid, Spain). Dr. Nieto has a strong mathematical and statistical background. In addition to his work for the project, he is a researcher with the Research Laboratory of Electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Cognitive and Neural Systems Department, Boston University, where he has been working on a project on the neural representation of language, P.I. Frank Guenther, PhD.
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Ying Xiong, MA
Research Assistant
Ying began working with the project in August of 2005. Originally from China, Ying came to the USA on a Freeman Foundation Grant and obtained both her undergraduate and master's degrees in psychology from Wesleyan University. She has previously worked in cognitive psychology research at Wesleyan and completed a clinical psychology summer research internship at UMASS Medical School. In addition, her bicultural/bilingual background also helps her achieve a better understanding of the population in our study. Ying is currently pursuing a clinical psychology Phd program.
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Christina Chung, MA
Research Assistant
Christina received master's degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University (MA) and Harvard Graduate School of Education (MEd), after completing her undergraduate work at University of California at Los Angeles. She is a former elementary school teacher, who has worked in the public school systems of Los Angeles and Orange County, CA. Her strong interest in bicultural/bilingual child mental health and its relationship to quality of parental child rearing practices led her to do qualitative research for the Harvard Family Research Project. Herself a native Korean-English bilingual speaker, Christina is especially interested in bicultural groups in the U.S. and how they construct their own unique interpretations of what optimal child mental health looks like, and what they believe are the attitudes and behaviors which support such development. Her work as a child assessor with the project brings her closer to the complex intersection of bilingualism, biculturalism, mental health, and the academic achievement of a child.
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Marisa Hollinshead, BA
Field Coordinator
Marisa graduated from the University of Washington in 2001 with a dual degree in Social Justice and Social Policy. Marisa is Spanish-English bilingual and has experience working with children and families from diverse social, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. While in Seattle she provided culturally relevant case management, outreach and crisis intervention for Hispanic families and children. She joined the project in the fall of 2005. Since September 2006 she is in charge of research assistant recruitment, training and supervision for the project and of maintaining communication with the participating families, children and schools and coordinating research participant assessment.
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Noe Olivera, MA
Research Assistant
Noe S. Olivera was born and raised in Prosser, Washington in a Mexican family. His experience working with people began following his father, continued as a supervisor for a large orchard company, and evolved into managing his father's orchards by the time he was fourteen, utilizing his excellent Spanish-English bilingual skills. Noe's personal experience helps him identify with children and the parents of the project. He received BAs in political science and psychology from the University of Idaho and he is currently working towards a Masters in psychology degree from Boston University. He currently conducts parent and child assessments and is willing to help out in any facet of the project.
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Past Project Staff
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Karen Meersohn, MA
Research Assistant
Karen began working with the study in October of 2003 and has conducted parent interviews, teacher observations and child language assessments.
Karen Meersohn has received a Master of Arts degree in Applied Linguistics from Boston University and Bachelor of Arts in Hispanic Literature and Linguistics from Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. Karen along with the rest of the team have begun in-depth analyses of linguistic variables on phonological memory and receptive vocabulary in bilingual children.
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Claudette Khoury
Research Assistant
Claudette brought many of her talents to the team and working as a child assessor and with subject recruitment. She is bilingual/bicultural with an international background giving her a strong understanding to the population involved in our project. Following and tracking the status of our cohort has been a main responsibilty of Claudette.
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Ariadna Forray, MD
Research Fellow
Ariadna served as a post-doctoral researcher under an award by the American Psychiatric Association Minority Medical Student Fellowship while she was a Harvard Medical School student. She brought a strong background in bench biological research and, as a Mexican-Chilean-American native bilingual/bicultural person, an understanding of the population we study. Ariadna conducted parent interviews and participated in many aspects of the research. Dr. Forray is currently completing her residency training in psychiatry at Yale University and plans to pursue child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship training.
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Lilian Perez
Subject Recruiter
Lilian is a neuroscience major at Wellesley College with a background working with bilingual children. She helped the project in recruiting new participants and screened subjects for eligibilty.
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Lindsie Thaden
Research Assessor
Lindsie worked with the project as a child assessor showing her true talents for working with children. With an earnest interest in psychiatry she gained experience in administering child language assessements.
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Claudia Burger, BA
Research Assistant
Claudia, a native of Queens, New York, holds a bachelor's degree from Wellesley College with a major in Spanish and Business. Claudia began work on the project during the Phase I of our longitudinal study. She was instrumental in many aspects of the project including parental interviews and child assessments. She is currently pursuing her doctorate at Fordham University's Counseling Psychology program.
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Mariza Goncalves, MA
Data Assistant
Mariza received an MA in developmental psychology from Columbia University's Teachers' College. She was a data assistant in Phase I of our longitudinal study. Mariza is presently pursuing a PhD in clinical psychology at Akron University, Ohio.
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Irma Jimenez, BA
Research Assistant
Irma recently completed her bachelors degree in Psychology from Northeastern University. Presently she is working towards her master's degree in child development at Tufts University. She also conducted child language assessments in English and Spanish. Irma was responsible for translating assessments and consent forms, conducting literature searches and other office duties.
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Lisa Maloney, MA
Research Fellow
Lisa received her MA in child development from Tufts University's Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development and was a research fellow for the project while also being on staff at the Developmental Evaluation Center at Children's Hospital Boston. She then completed a second master's degree in speech/language pathology at the University of Cincinnati.
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Laura Medrano, MA
Research Assistant
Laura came with a degree in psychology from University of Salamanca, Spain. She was a crucial collaborator in the initial clinic-based study (Study II), single-handedly recruiting and assessing the large majority of the participating children (n=100), families and teachers. She then continued her clinical career with the Latino-American Health Institute, where she became clinical director. She is currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in Marine Biology in Australia.
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Liana Peña Morgens, PhD
Research Fellow
Dr. Morgens earned her Master's Degree in Psychology at Wesleyan University and received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Florida State University. She completed her internship and post- doctoral training in neuropsychology as a fellow at McLean Hospital / Harvard Medical School. She is currently on staff as a clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist at McLean Hospital and is an Instructor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School. Her work with the project focused on setting up the database and on data management for Study II and she contributed in writing and co-authored one of the first papers.
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Paola Uccelli, PhD
Research Assistant
Paola made important contributions as a doctoral level research assistant in Study II, setting the initial bilingual child language assessment protocols. Since, she has completed her Ph.D. in language and literacy at the Human Development and Psychology program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she is currently a postdoctoral fellow.
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Anahi Uran, BA
Research Assistant
First research assistant in the early days of the project. Returned to Colombia, her country of origin, to pursue studies in psychology.
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