LEED Director
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, drawing on methods and theories from child clinical psychology, developmental psychology, and developmental cognitive neuroscience to understand how early adverse experiences shape child development.
See more about her work: Google Scholar link: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=aPHU7tUAAAAJ
UH Faculty web page: https://www.uh.edu/class/psychology/about/people/johanna-bick/index.php
LEED Graduate Students
Haley
Laughlin
Kelly
Barry
Marguerite Knudtson
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
Litwin
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 Mayfield
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.
LEED Undergraduates
Ashlie
Mai
UH Senior - Psychology Student
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.
Ifrah
Ahmad
UH Senior - Psychology Student
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”.
Samantha Taraby
UH Senior - Psychology Student
dent
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.
Jonas
Amaya
UH Senior - Psychology Student
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.
Leslie Gonzalez
UH Junior - Psychology Student
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.
Jana
Saidy
UH Senior - Psychology Student
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.
Ramaisa Saleem
UH Senior - Psychology Student
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.
Rini
Hatty
UH Junior - Psychology and Computer Science Student
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.