Anna Peddle

apeddle1@student.gsu.edu   |  Curriculum Vitae

Anna is a doctoral student in her fifth year of Georgia State University’s Clinical Psychology program. She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Furman University in 2018. Prior to joining Dr. Cynthia Stappenbeck’s lab at GSU, she worked as a clinical research coordinator at the University of Minnesota on a project investigating subgroups within opioid use disorder and worked in inpatient psychiatric hospital settings with adolescents and women. At GSU, her research is focused on how sexual behavior is impacted by prior history of sexual assault, power dynamics with sexual partners, and cognitions about personal safety. She is also particularly interested in nuanced constructs such as consent and sexual abdication. Clinically, she has focused on working with individuals with substance use disorders, PTSD, and emotion dysregulation.

 

Brennah RossBrennah Ross

bross28@student.gsu.edu  | Curriculum Vitae

Brennah is a PhD student in Clinical-Community Psychology at GSU. She grew up near Philadelphia and graduated from The College of New Jersey with a B.S. in Economics and minors in Public Health and Politics, Philosophy, & Law. After college, Brennah gained extensive research experience in anxiety and phobia treatment at Temple University in the Child & Adolescent Anxiety Disorders Clinic and Heimberg Anxiety Lab. Most recently, she coordinated a collaborative NIH-funded clinical trial between Temple’s School of Dentistry and the Department of Psychology examining the efficacy of a single session exposure-based intervention for dental phobia. Brennah is interested in reducing barriers and improving access to mental health treatment for victims of sexual violence, especially through the use of brief technology-based interventions. She is also interested in working to bridge the gap that persists between evidence-based public policy and academic research.


Olivia Westemeier

owestemeier1@student.gsu.edu   |  Curriculum Vitae

Olivia is in GSU’s Clinical-Community Psychology PhD program. She received her Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a minor in Rhetoric from the University of Iowa in 2021. At Iowa, she assisted in developing prosocial, protective behavioral strategies to reduce sexually aggressive behavior and risky sexual behavior; and as an active member of Iowa’s Anti-Violence Coalition where she collaborated on campus sexual violence climate assessment, policy, system response, and prevention programming. Olivia’s primary research interest is how event-level (e.g., alcohol intoxication, emotional state) and psychological mechanisms act as risk or protective factors for sexual perpetration. In addition, she is interested in campus climate for sexual misconduct assessment, and how to integrate these two interests into violence prevention at the community level.


Emily Patton

epatton9@student.gsu.edu   |  Curriculum Vitae

Emily is a clinical-community doctoral student at Georgia State University. She studied Psychology and minored in Public Health at DePaul University where she graduated with her bachelor’s degree in 2020. After graduating Emily worked as a Research Study Coordinator within the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University examining efficacy and effectiveness education trials. Prior to joining Dr. Stappenbeck’s lab, Emily worked with populations with PTSD receiving Cognitive Processing Therapy as a research assistant at the Road Home Program: The National Center of Excellence for Veterans and their Families and the Treatment Response Efficacy Accessibility and Timing Lab at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, IL. Emily is interested in mitigating negative experiences of those who have experienced sexual and relationship violence as they seek and receive treatment. Further, she is interested in contextualizing improvement, such as treatment expectancies, and better understanding treatment engagement.


Zoe Zong

yzong2@student.gsu.edu   |  Curriculum Vitae

Zoe is a PhD student in GSU’s Clinical Psychology Program. She received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology and minor in Data Science from the University of California, Berkeley. During her undergraduate studies, she contributed to research using an ecological momentary assessment paradigm to study women who experienced sexual assault during the acute post-assault period and efforts adapting alcohol and sexual violence prevention programming to the navy population. As a peer coordinator at the sexual violence prevention center at UC Berkeley, she evaluated and implemented prevention programs for undergraduate student organizations. After graduating, she worked as a lab manager at the University of California, San Francisco, where she coordinated studies examining the efficacy of novel phone-based PTSD treatment. Zoe is interested in using ambulatory assessment methods to better understand the occurrences and consequences of sexual violence and to inform the development of just-in-time adaptive interventions for violence perpetration and victimization. She is also interested in using community-based participatory research to develop and implement culturally sensitive sex education and violence prevention programs in underserved communities.