HIRING - CLINICAL ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, PSYCHOLOGY

The Department of Psychology at the University of Georgia invites applications for a full time, non‐tenure‐track Clinical Assistant Professor. The successful candidate will support the training mission of the department’s in-house Psychology Clinic (http://www.psychology.uga.edu/clinic)  by providing supervision to doctoral students in a variety of evidence‐based assessments and interventions for children, adolescents, and young adults. Skills in ps

Cultural Psychology Program in Cuba - May 11-22,2025

Cuba Cultural Psychology
The Cultural Psychology Program in Cuba offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel to a country rarely visited by Americans. Only 90 miles from the southernmost point of the United States, the island nation was declared a socialist State in May of 1961 by Fidel Castro, who had come to power in 1959. Our program will explore aspects of the lives of present-day Cubans, 64 years after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
 

Ashley Sanders

Assistant Professor, Cognitive Neuroscience Program, Social, Developmental, and Health Psychology

Dr. Sanders will be accepting applications for a graduate student for Fall 2026.

Dr. Sanders is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Georgia. She is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist who received her PhD in Applied Biopsychology from the University of New Orleans in 2019. She then began her postdoctoral training at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis working on the Lifespan Human Connectome Project in Development (HCP-D). Shortly after, Dr. Sanders joined the NIMH-funded T32 Developmental Neuroscience & Child Psychopathology postdoctoral training program in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University under the direction of Drs. Deanna Barch and Joan Luby. She joined UGA in Fall 2024. 

Dr. Sanders' research aim is to elucidate the neural mechanisms by which socioeconomic disadvantage impacts a child's biobehavioral trajectory and risk for psychiatric illness, with the ultimate goal of informing public health policies targeting childhood adversity. To this end, she utilizes a range of neuroimaging modalities (e.g., resting-state functional connectivity, diffusion tensor imaging) alongside inflammatory biomarkers (e.g., cytokines) to understand the role of a child's environment in their neurodevelopment. She also has a keen interest in brain regions that are implicated in stress and cognition but are otherwise unexplored in relation to social and environmental disadvantage (e.g., the cerebellum).

Education:

Postdoc, Washington University in St. Louis (2020-2024)

PhD, University of New Orleans (2014-2019)

Research Interests:

Socioeconomic inequity is among the most pervasive types of childhood stress and is associated with a broad range of psychiatric disorders (e.g., major depression, anxiety, conduct disorder) and subclinical anomalies (e.g., altered reward processing, emotion dysregulation, school problems). There is a growing body of literature suggesting that socioeconomic disadvantage during childhood impacts brain development at structural and functional levels. Despite these challenges, disadvantaged children often develop adaptive skills and abilities to cope with their harsh environments. Adaptations to such settings may impact how the child processes information about their environment. However, the mechanisms through which childhood disadvantage affects neurodevelopment are not well understood. Dr. Sanders' program of research incorporates neuroimaging and immune metrics to investigate how disadvantage-related neuroinflammation impacts a child's developmental trajectory.  

Selected Publications:

Sanders, A.F.P., B., Seider, N. A., Triplett, R. L., Lean, R. E., Neil, J. J., Miller, J.P., Tillman, R., Smyser, T.A., Barch, D.M, Luby, J.L, Chen, E., Miller, G. E. (2024). Prenatal exposure to maternal disadvantage-related inflammatory biomarkers: associations with neonatal white matter microstructure. Translational Psychiatry, 14(1), 72.

Sanders, A.F.P., Harms, M.P., Kandala, S., Marek, S., Somerville, L.H., Bookheimer, S.Y., Dapretto, M., Thomas, K.M., Van Essen, D.C., Yacoub, E., & Barch, D.M. (2023). Age-related differences in resting-state functional connectivity from childhood to adolescence. Cerebral Cortex, 33(11), 6928-6942.

Sanders, A.F.P., Baum, G.L., Harms, M.P., Kandala, S., Bookheimer, S.Y., Dapretto, M., Somerville, L.H., Thomas, K.M., Van Essen, D.C., Yacoub, E., & Barch, D.M. (2022). Developmental trajectories of cortical thickness by functional brain network: The roles of pubertal timing and socioeconomic status. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 57, 101145.

Other Affiliations:
SEND Lab Website

Lia Follet

Graduate Student, Clinical Program
Education:

Master of Professional Studies in Clinical Psychological Science from the University of Maryland at College Park
Degree Conferred: December 2020
 

Bachelor of Science in Psychology; Minor in Women’s and Gender Studies from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Degree Conferred: May 2019

Research Interests:

My research focuses on understanding how adolescents and emerging adults experience suicidal crises and how these different experiences relate to crisis treatment engagement. My work pulls heavily from affective and cognitive science.

Of note:

I am a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow through the Department of Defense and a doctoral fellow through the University of Georgia Graduate School.

Daylin Delgado

Graduate Student, Clinical Program

Daylin Delgado is a first-generation Cuban-American woman from Miami Gardens, Florida. She double-majored in Psychology and Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. While at Amherst, Daylin discovered her love for research, particularly in adolescent mental health, while working with Dr. Julia McQuade in the Peer Relationships Lab. 

After graduation in May 2022, Daylin worked for two years as a clinical research assistant on the Autistic Adults and other Stakeholders Engage Together - Suicide Prevention (AASET-SP) project at the UNC TEACCH Autism Program in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her primary research project focused on adapted interventions for addressing suicidality in autistic youth and young adults. In this role, Daylin gained invaluable experience in community-partnered research and clinical trials, and what it means to involve the communities we wish to help in the research process from start to finish. 

In the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program at the University of Georgia, Daylin hopes to continue to improve and expand her research skills, and address the issues of mental health disparities in adolescents from underrepresented and underserved communities. 

Education:

B.A., Psychology, Amherst College, Amherst, MA

Selected Publications:

Benevides, T.W., Shore, S.M., Heinly, J.M., Delgado, D., Caplan, R., Hector, B.L., Holliday-Willey, L., Nebeker, L., Wittig, K., Roubinov, D., Maddox, B.B., & Jager-Hyman, S. (2025). Short take: An approach to decision-making in community-based participatory research to foster co-ownership and trust. Field Methods. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X251339954

Delgado, D., LaPoint, S. C., Simmons, G. L., Heinly, J. M., Shepherd, W. S., Kiernan, B., Brookman-Frazee, L. I., Storch, E. A., Maddox, B.B. (2024). “He just wants someone to hear him and listen to him”: Barriers and facilitators to autistic youth with anxiety receiving quality mental healthcare. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-024-06574-1 

Reid, M., Delgado, D., Heinly, J., Shapiro, S., Kiernan, B., Morgan, L., Maddox, B. B., Jager-Hyman, S. (2024). Suicidal thoughts and behaviors in people on the autism spectrum. Current Psychiatry Reports. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-024-01533-0 

LaPoint, S.C., Simmons, G.L., Heinly, J., Delgado, D., Shepherd, W.S., Brookman-Frazee, L., Storch, E.A., & Maddox, B.B. (2024). “Education would be step number one”: Community mental health clinicians’ training and support needs to treat anxiety in autistic youth. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2024.102450 

McQuade, J. D., Breaux, R., Cash, A. R., Horton, N. J., Azu, M. A., & Delgado, D. (2023). Differential associations and concordance across measures of parent emotion socialization: The role of parent and adolescent emotion dysregulation. Social Development, 32, 1374–1393. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12696 

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