Graduate Students

Research Coordinator

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Recent Lab Graduates

Graduate Students

Evan Waldheter, MA
A native of Long Island, NY, Evan received his BS in Human Development in 1999 from Cornell University.  For his master's thesis at UNC, he studied social cognitive and other predictors of inpatient violence among individuals with a severe mental illness at John Umstead Hospital in Butner, NC.  Evan's current clinical and research interests include the treatment of severe mental illness, and specifically early psychosis.  He is working with David Penn on an NIMH-funded project evaluating a psychosocial treatment for individuals who recently experienced their first episode of psychosis.  This treatment is rooted in principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy, and aims to improve clients' illness-management and functional recovery from psychosis.  Finally, when not working, Evan can be found watching reality TV, listening to Billy Joel, and continuing his never-ending quest to find good pizza and bagels here in the South.

During the 2007-2008 academic year, Evan is completing his clinical internship at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Hospital in Adult Psychiatry.

David Roberts, MA
I’m from Denver, but have moved around a bit, living in Connecticut, San Francisco, and Chicago, before moving to Chapel Hill. I became interested in psychosis through studying Anthropology in college. After college, I spent several years working in mental health treatment and research, and then got a masters degree studying the effects on therapists of working with severely mentally ill clients. Since arriving at UNC, my clinical and research work has focused on treatment of schizophrenia. With David Penn, I am studying Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT), a cognitively-oriented group psychotherapy designed to improve social functioning in schizophrenia. I like reading about, cooking, and eating plants and animals. Recently, I’ve taken to making uninformed, expansive claims about the role of mirror neuron dysfunction in schizophrenia.

During the 2007-2008 academic year, Dave is completing his clinical internship at Yale University in Psychiatry/ CMHC (Outpatient).

Abigail Judge, MA
Abigail graduated from Brandeis University in 2000. Before entering the clinical program in 2003, she worked as a counselor at a residential school for adolescents with psychiatric disorders in Cambridge and then as a research coordinator at The Schizophrenia Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Her clinical and research interests include severe psychopathology in adolescence, and currently focus on the development of psychosocial treatments for children and adolescents with psychotic disorders and their families. Both David Penn and Lin Sikich of UNC Psychiatry advise Abigail’s research in this area. Secondary interests include the application of qualitative methods such as narrative interviewing and ethnography to treatment development research. Outside of the lab Abigail is involved in greyhound rescue, horseback riding, and filmmaking with Evan.

David Johnson, MA
I was raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania (made famous by Billy Joel) and spent my weekends at the Jersey Shore. While attending the University of CA, San Diego I studied ERPs in a Cognitive Psych lab at Scripps Research Institute under Dr. John Polich. After graduating I worked with Dr. Eric Granholm and his wonderful crew at the San Diego Veterans Hospital. That project investigated aging in people with schizophrenia by looking at changes in neurocognition (using pupillometry and neuropsych tests) and clinical symptoms. My thesis was a study of client characteristics that predicted group alliance in group therapy for schizophrenia. Currently I am working with David on a small pilot study of loving-kindness meditation aimed at improving the negative symptoms of clients. I'm also involved in psychotherapy treatment research in Moshi, Tanzania with collaborators at Duke University (our hated basketball rivals). In my copious spare time I enjoy a Sunday morning at church, Sunday afternoon spent playing basketball and watching the Philadelphia Eagles, and Sunday night dancing to hot beats at a Salsa Club....all in the company of my beautiful fiance Katie.

Sarah Uzenoff, MA
Sarah was born and raised in Connecticut, and earned her BA in psychology from Princeton University in 2003. After graduation, she worked in New York City as a case worker in foster care and adoption, and then as a clinical research associate in the department of psychiatry at SUNY DownstateMedical Center in Brooklyn, NY. Currently Sarah’s research interests include treatment for first-episode psychosis. At UNC she has co-facilitated a first-episode psychoeducation group as well as SCIT therapy groups. Her master’s thesis evaluates a preliminary trial of Adherence-Coping-Education (ACE) therapy, a cognitively-oriented therapy developed by Dr. Penn and colleagues at UNC aimed at improving attitudes towards medication in individuals with first-episode psychosis. In her spare time, she enjoys the Carolina sunshine, good barbecue, caring for homeless animals, and searching for quality hip-hop dance spots.

Tim Perry
A UNC alumnus, Tim spent several years working in the autism and developmental disabilities fields before returning for graduate school in the fall of 2005.  He is currently involved in a pilot study which seeks to adapt the manualized Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT) for use with adults and adolescents with high-functioning autism.  This intervention was originally developed by Dr. Penn and Dave Roberts for use with individuals with schizophrenia.  Tim hopes to extend this intervention by examining the relationship between social impairment and psychological distress in individuals with autism and whether improvements in social functioning result in lower rates of reported distress.  He is working on this project under the guidance of Dr. Penn and Dr. Gary Mesibov at Division TEACCH.  In his spare time Tim may be found checking out the local music scene (at record stores or concerts), playing guitar, exercising or watching college athletics and rooting for his UNC Tarheels.

Clare Marks
Clare was raised in Rockaway Beach, NY. She graduated from Binghamton University with a BA in Psychology. While at Binghamton, she worked with Dr. Mark Lenzenweger studying the neurobiological bases of schizophrenia and schizotypy. After graduating in 2004, she was a Research Support Assistant at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) where she assisted in trials sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. While working at NYSPI, she was a Volunteer Research Assistant for Dr. Barbara Cornblatt at the Recognition and Prevention Program affiliated with Zucker-Hillside Hospital. Clare’s current research interests are in early disease detection and prevention, factors that contribute to disease onset, as well as the recurrence of episodes and risk factors in first-degree relatives. In her free time, she runs with the Trailheads, a local running group, and enjoys going out dancing with Sarah.

back to top

Research Coordinator

Piper Meyer, PhD
Piper Meyer is a Research Coordinator for the Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT) study that is comparing a group to improve social cognition to a group receiving treatment as usual.  She has ten years of clinical experience working with people with schizophrenia.  Dr. Meyer
graduated from Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis with a doctorate in Clinical Rehabilitation Psychology.  She was a postdoctoral fellow in Mental Health and Substance Abuse Systems and Services Research at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2003-2005.  She has specialized in psychiatric rehabilitation and has worked on projects that examined the implementation of Assertive Community Treatment across the state of North Carolina, Forensic Assertive Community Treatment teams across the nation, and a study of comparing group CBT to group supportive counseling for
treatment resistant auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia.  She has received extensive training in ACT, social skills training, cognitive behavior therapy, and Illness Management and Recovery.  She co-developed the advanced cognitive behavioral treatment training for Illness Management
training and is currently a national trainer and consultant for Illlness Management and Recovery.

back to top

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Kacie Brewer
Caitlin Holaway
Alan Harper
CC Glenn
Elby Katumkeeryil
Kate McIntyre

back to top

Recent Lab Graduates

Amy Pinkham, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Brain Behavior Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania Medical School

After receiving her doctorate in clinical psychology from UNC in August of 2006, Amy began work as a postdoctoral fellow in the Brain Behavior Laboratory (BBL) of the Neuropsychiatry Department at the University of Pennsylvania.  Since arriving at the BBL, she has continued her research program which links the fields of clinical psychology and neuroscience in an effort to address fundamental questions regarding the behavioral characteristics and neural basis of social cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia.  In her functional neuroimaging (fMRI) work, she is currently collecting data that will be used to investigate neural functioning (using Blood Oxygen Level Dependent or BOLD contrast) in response to facial emotion identification and facial recognition memory in individuals with schizophrenia and their first-degree relatives.  As part of this effort, Amy is also collecting and analyzing fMRI data based on perfusion contrasts, a variety of arterial spin labeling (ASL) MRI methods designed to visualize and quantify cerebral blood flow during various states of brain function.  In addition to these projects, she is also developing behavioral paradigms that should help in determining the nature of social cognitive deficits in schizophrenia (i.e. a generalized vs. specific deficit) and that she also plans to use in her comparison of social cognitive abilities in individuals with schizophrenia and individuals with autism.

Shannon Couture, PhD
Lecturer in Abnormal Psychology, University of Manchester, Manchester, England

I will be exploring cognitive models of schizophrenia, with a likely focus on the development and maintenance of negative symptoms.  I will be working with Drs. Tony Morrison and Aaron T. Beck to examine factors such as the pervasiveness of impairments in complex psychological functions ( e.g., self-reflectiveness and cognitive flexibility), as well as appraisals and reasoning biases which serve to reinforce and exacerbate negative symptoms.  Likely future pursuits will involve treatment options to ameliorate some of these factors and thus improve quality of life and community functioning.  I will also be conducting research with Dr. Steven Jones investigating psychological models of bipolar disorder.  In my spare time, I like to hike in the beautiful English countryside and travel around Europe.

back to top