Dr. Bauer is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Georgia. Dr. Bauer earned his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2022 after completing his pre-doctoral internship at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) Medical Center.

Dr. Bauer’s program of research uses a behavioral economic framework to help understand mental health-related decisions (e.g., help seeking) and to influence people towards choices that align with their own self-declared interests, with a particular emphasis in suicide prevention. Dr. Bauer has focused extensively on examining how cognitive heuristics and biases might contribute to suicide-related outcomes and inform prevention efforts and interventions. This line of research has been funded through several externally-funded agencies, including from the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

I plan on accepting a new graduate student for Fall 2024. My lab is currently focused on the following topics:

1. Using passive sensing data (e.g., smartphone, wearables) to detect symptoms of a suicidal crisis
2. Applying nudges to real-world settings to increase engagement with suicide prevention resources and help seeking
3. Examining various decision-making processes and their relationship to suicide risk via behavioral (e.g., task-based) and psychophysiological measurements (e.g., EEG)

Students with a research background and interest in studying these topics (or related topics) will be a good fit for the lab. Students with quantitative backgrounds or experience with statistical programming languages (e.g., R) are especially encouraged to apply.

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Georgia and the director of the FUERTE lab. I earned my PhD in clinical psychology with a child emphasis from the University of Denver, did an APA-accredited internship in the child track at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and completed an NIMH-funded T32 postdoctoral fellowship in traumatic stress at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Broadly, my research is focused on understanding the mechanisms that contribute to, maintain and/or exacerbate mental health disparities among Latinx youth and families. I am especially interested in:

1. Identifying and supporting Latinx families most at risk for experiencing the negative mental health sequela of health disparities
2. Applying an ecological systems framework to identify and target the risk and resilience mechanisms that influence the mental health of Latinx youth and families
3. Establishing and leveraging community-based partnerships to increase the accessibility and acceptability of mental health services for Latinx communities
4. Improving the translation of Latinx mental health disparities research into practice and policy

Ultimately, my goal is to promote the well-being of Latinx youth and their families by eliminating health disparities via research, clinical practice, and policy advocacy.

**I plan to review applications for Fall 2024 admission to our clinical psychology doctoral program.** 

Veronica is a Corporate Senior Workforce Strategy Manager at UPS in the department of Organizational Effectiveness, specializing in organizational design, effectiveness, and process improvement. She joined UPS in 2005 as a Corporate Organizational Development Manager in which she worked as an internal consultant focusing on developing programs in the areas of career development, performance management, change management, assessments, and survey design and feedback. She then accepted the role of Region Talent Manager for UPS Supply Chain Solutions, where she supported 5 businesses (i.e., Freight, Global Freight Forwarding, Healthcare, Logistics and Distribution, and Coyote) with their talent management needs such as: succession planning, performance management, developmental programming, executive coaching and education, and culture change. Veronica then accepted a position as a Corporate Talent Manager prior to her current role, where she worked on building an enterprise-wide selection program for UPS Small Package, supported work in career architecture and introduced the concept of a Talent Marketplace to guide UPS into a future focused strategy for HR programming. Dr. Vargas earned a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Georgia, an M.S. in Psychology from Auburn University and a Ph.D. in Industrial Organizational Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology.  She is certified in Organizational Design from the Center of Organizational Effectiveness from the University of Southern California, has earned a Six Sigma Green Belt from Villanova University, and completed course work for the Six Sigma Black Belt from Georgia Tech University. She is a member of the Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology (SIOP).