My current research interest involves exploring the relationships between language, physiological responses, and cognitive-emotional development in children during dyadic interactions. So, I investigate how parental language supports autonomy and how that can influence children's self-regulation by analyzing physiological markers like respiratory sinus arrhythmia and neural activity via functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

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 will not be accepting new graduate students for Fall 2026. 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 in Latino/a youth and families. 

I plan to review applications for Fall 2026 admission to the clinical psychology program. 

Veronica is Director of Organizational Effectiveness at Cox Communications, specializing in engagement, survey design, feedback and listening methodologies, organizational performance measurement and analytics, culture change, learning evaluation, ROI analysis, process improvement, and research. She joined Cox in November of 2023. Prior to her position at Cox, she worked at UPS for 19 years, joining 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 UPS 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, 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. Her last position prior to joining Cox Communications was Workforce Strategy Sr Manager, in which she focused on organizational design, effectiveness, process improvement, and workforce strategy. Dr. Vargas earned a B.A. in Psychology and Spanish 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).