The Psychology Fellowship was recently very pleased to receive the match results for the fellows who will be entering the program in the summer of 2013. They sent the following summary of their fabulous new first-year predoctoral fellows:
Naama Gershy is our incoming Trauma Fellow. Naama received her undergraduate and Master's degree in Psychology at Tel Aviv University and is a licensed Psychologist in Israel. After working with children growing up near the Gaza Strip suffering from PTSD and Anxiety disorders, Naama made the decision to come to the U.S. to conduct research and further develop her treatment skills related to children and trauma. She received a Fulbright Doctoral Fellowship to support the first two years of her PhD program in Clinical Psychology at Long Island University-Brooklyn. Naama's clinical externships have been both in Israel, at the Schneider Children's Hospital and the Barzilai Hospital, and in New York at Mount Sinai Medical Center. Naama's research has focused on parents' mentalization and mindfulness, and their relation to emotion regulation in children.
Lauren Herlihy is our incoming Autism Fellow. She completed her undergraduate studies at Vassar College where she majored in Neuroscience with a minor in Spanish. Prior to graduate school Lauren was a Research Assistant within the Yale Autism Program and has continued her affiliation as a Zigler Fellow and a research collaborator with Yale faculty. She is currently completing her PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Connecticut. Lauren has extensive experience working with children with autism and has conducted numerous evaluations in both English and Spanish. She has co-led a social skills group for school-aged boys with autism spectrum disorders as well as a parent support and psychoeducational group for their parents. Lauren's research has focused on socioeconomic influences on parenting stress in parents of toddlers with autism and sociodemographic differences in screening for autism.
Bradley Jerson is our incoming Pediatrics Fellow. As an undergraduate, he majored in Psychology with a minor in Child and Family Studies at SUNY--Stony Brook. He then became a Certified Child Life specialist and spent three years working in that capacity in the pediatric acute care, pediatric intensive care, and pediatric hematology/oncology units at Stony Brook University Medical Center. He is currently completing his PhD in Clinical Psychology at Fordham University. Bradley has completed pediatrics-focused externships at Mount Sinai Medical Center, Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, and Columbia University's Division of Pediatric Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation. Bradley's research has focused on psychosocial aspects of living with pediatric chronic illnesses.
Jessica Mayo is our incoming Early Childhood Fellow. She completed her undergraduate studies at Georgetown University where she majored in Psychology with a minor in Women's Studies. Prior to graduate school, Jessica was a Research Assistant at Children's National Medical Center researching the plasticity of language and working memory. She is currently completing her PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Connecticut. Jessica comes to the Child Study Center with a strong background in preschool and infant mental health, including serving as a preschool teacher, consulting with a local pre-school and in an Early Head Start Program, leading parenting groups for highly stressed low income families, and providing in-home psychotherapy services to first time mothers at risk for abusing and/or neglecting their children. Jessica's research has focused on language development in children with autism spectrum disorders.