Meet Our Team

WELCOME LEEDers!

Meet the talented individuals who form the backbone of our team at LEED. Each member brings a unique set of skills, experiences, and passion to the table, contributing to our collective success. Together, we foster a dynamic and collaborative environment where innovation thrives. Explore the profiles below to get acquainted with the faces driving excellence and shaping the future at LEED.

Dr. Johanna Bick

Dr. Johanna Bick is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Houston. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Delaware in 2011. Dr. Bick’s work takes an interdisciplinary approach, by incorporating methods and theories from child clinical psychology, developmental psychology, and developmental cognitive neuroscience, to understand how early adverse experiences shape child development.

Graduate
Students

Welcome to our Graduate Student section! Here you'll find a quick introduction to the passionate grad students who bring their dedication and curiosity to LEED. They're the heartbeat of our research community, and we're excited for you to meet them.

Xinge’s primary research focus revolves around examining the influence of familial environmental factors, such as family stress, maternal psychological distress, and parenting style, on child psychopathology through the lens of developmental neuroscience.

Haley is a doctoral student in the DCBN program. Her research interests include investigating the sources of individual variability of outcomes in children who experience stress and adversity.

Kelly is a fourth-year child clinical doctoral student in the lab. Her research focuses on understanding how experiences of stress impact brain development during sensitive developmental periods. She is particularly interested in identifying neural and socio-cognitive processes that confer risk for psychopathology.

Marguerite is a doctoral student on the Clinical Psychology research interests include examining the effects of early life adversity on children’s emotion regulation and behavioral outcomes through effects on neurodevelopment, and identifying family environmental factors that contribute to resiliency.

Josh is a doctoral student in the Child Clinical Psychology program. He spent a year researching neurodevelopmental outcomes in children with congenital heart disease at Boston Children’s Hospital. Josh’s research interests involve using neuroimaging methods to better understand the relationships between environmental risk factors and cognitive outcomes.

Brookelyn is a doctoral student in the DCBN program. Her research interests include the use of neuroimaging to understand risk factors’ manifestations in behavior. She hopes to later apply what she learns to trauma and developmentally originating disorders while simultaneously applying grit, resilience, and beneficial experiences.

Undergraduate Students

Welcome to our Undergraduate Students section! Here you'll find a quick introduction to the eager minds that help bring our projects to life. They add that spark of new ideas and energy that we're so excited about here at LEED.

Ashlie is an undergraduate research assistant pursuing a B.S. in Psychology with a minor in Biology. She joined the lab Summer 2024. Previously in the lab, she presented a scholarly poster at the undergraduate research symposium titled “Differential Impacts of Perinatal and Socioeconomic Risk on Executive Function and Socioemotional Processing in Early Childhood”. She is currently developing heart rate data collection and analysis methods using the Borjon lab’s TonaFlow system.

Leslie is an undergraduate research assistant in the lab pursuing a B.S. in Psychology with a minor in Human Development & Family Sciences. Her research interests include examining how exposure to structural instability and parent stress levels impacts a child’s development, as well as how children cope with or adapt to stressful situations.

Ifrah is currently a research assistant in the lab pursuing a B.S. in Psychology and minoring in Biology. She is actively involved in EEG data collection and behavioral coding, alongside working on an honor’s thesis that explores how early neural markers of attention relate to later socioemotional outcomes in preterm children. Previously in the lab she has presented a scholarly poster at an undergraduate research symposium titled “Differential Impacts of Perinatal and Socioeconomic Risk on Executive Function and Socioemotional Processing in Early Childhood”.

Jana is an undergraduate research assistant in our lab pursuing a B.S. in Psychology with a minor in Biology. She is currently involved in processing ECG data. Her research interest lies in how back-and-forth communication between adults and their young children affects the child’s vocabulary growth and comprehension.

Samantha is an undergraduate research assistant in our lab. She is currently assisting in data collection. Her research interests include understanding how adversity at a young age may influence cognitive development in addition to how children exposed to trauma differ from others in terms of physiological responses to stress.

Ramaisa is an undergraduate research assistant in our lab. She joined the lab May 2025 and is earning her B.S. in Psychology with a minor in Sociology. Her research interests include studying the links between cognitive abilities and mental disorders.

Jonas is a research assistant in the lab earning his B.S. in Psychology double minoring in Biology and Human Development & Family Sciences on the Pre-Medical Track. He joined the lab in April 2025 and is passionate about understanding how early relationships shape developmental outcomes. His current research interests center on parent-child attachment and its influence on emotional regulation and cognitive growth in early childhood.

Rinijhini is an undergraduate research assistant pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science and Psychology with a minor in Mathematics. She is currently training for working with diffusion tensing imaging, using Mrtrix3 to analyze MRI scans. Her research interests include studying machine learning and how it can relate to psychology.

LEED Alumni

Thank you for your commitment to furthering our mission and being such an integral part of the LEED family. Your dedication and hard work have left a lasting mark on our community, and we are so grateful for everything you have contributed. Once in LEED, always a LEEDer!