Elizabeth Austin, PhD MPH a Senior Research Scientist within the Department of Health Systems and Population Health at the University of Washington, and a Lecturer in the Department of Prevention and Community Health at George Washington University. Her research aims to understand and reduce barriers to care for people with multiple stigmatized conditions (e.g., substance use, HIV, hepatitis C) and tailor the design and delivery of interventions to address substance use disorders in diverse community and care settings.

David Eddie PhD, ABAR, is the Associate Director of Clinical Translational Recovery Science at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Recovery Research Institute and Center for Addiction Medicine, a clinical psychologist in Massachusetts General Hospital’s Department of Psychiatry, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and a diplomate of the American Board of Addiction Psychology. His research seeks to better understand the psychological and psychophysiological causes and conditions that lead to people becoming addicted to alcohol and other drugs, and how these factors can also maintain addiction.

Jessica (Jess) Flori received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Central Florida, completed her pre-doctoral internship at Yale University’s Substance use and Addiction Treatment Unit, and is currently a NIAAA-funded T32 Post-Doctoral Fellow at University of Connecticut’s School of Medicine under the mentorship of Dr. Kristyn Zajac. Jess’s research focuses on understanding mechanisms of action of behavioral interventions for substance use disorders and mechanisms underlying the maintenance of substance use behaviors.

Dr. Mer Francis, Ph.D., MSW (they/them), is a queer, disabled assistant professor with the VCU School of Social Work. Mer has 11+ years of licensed clinical practice experience in community mental and behavioral health, and this clinical work is the foundation for their research, activism, and teaching practice. Their research focuses on how people balance the complex factors of trauma, family history, and social networks as they navigate their recovery process. Mer also engages in community organizing and activism around harm reduction, housing access, and civil rights to improve how our system serves the needs of people who use drugs and alcohol.

Christian C. Garcia, Ph.D., is a current NIAAA T32 postdoctoral fellow at the University of New Mexico Center on Alcohol, Substance Use, and Addictions. His program of research builds upon his previous training within the Neurocognitive lab at the University of Florida and his passion for community-based research to address the gaps in our understanding of alcohol use and health behaviors/behavioral strategies throughout the adult lifespan. Dr. Garcia seeks to further harm reduction efforts by addressing alcohol use from a life-course perspective and examining age/aging as a mechanism of behavior change to inform and develop adaptive interventions that serve the diverseneds of communities and their members.

Christina Gillezeau is a third-year clinical psychology graduate student at the University of New Mexico. Her research focuses on underlying mechanisms of behavior change in treatment for posttraumatic stress and substance use disorders. She has a background as a chronic disease epidemiologist and brings her understanding of social determinants of health to both her research and clinical work. She hopes that her work can improve accessibility to and efficacy of mental health treatments, especially for minoritized populations.

Richard Neil Greene is postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Alcohol, Substance Use, and Addictions at the University of New Mexico. His research focuses on social networks, housing as a social determinant of health, linkage facilitation, and peer-delivered interventions.

Emily Helminen, PhD is a NIDA T32 postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University. Dr. Helminen’s research focuses on developing and testing compassion-based interventions to improve mental and behavioral health among sexual and gender minority people, with a focus on trauma-related symptoms and alcohol use. Their research also seeks to understand the physiological (e.g., stress reactivity) and psychological (e.g., shame) mechanisms by which compassion-based interventions are effective.

Dr. McCurdy is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging at Yale School of Medicine. Her program of research centers on developing, evaluating, and uncovering neural and psychological mechanisms of psychosocial addiction interventions. She is currently piloting a digital social support intervention she created for adults who engage in hazardous alcohol use and want to cut down. This project combines her passion for probing MOBC and for tangibly supporting people with addiction through D&I efforts.

Lindsay Meredith is a PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles and a current psychology doctoral intern at the Medical University of South Carolina. Her research aims to improve behavioral and pharmacological treatments for alcohol use disorder (AUD), in part by testing novel interventions and examining mechanisms of action. She is particularly interested in better understanding the involvement of immune processes in the maintenance of AUD.

Dylan K Richards, PhD is a Research Assistant Professor at the Center on Alcohol, Substance use, And Addictions (CASAA) at the University of New Mexico. He is currently supported by an early career development award from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA; K01AA030789). His primary research interest is in how and why people improve their relationship with alcohol, cannabis, and other drugs.

Ms. Smith-LeCavalier is a graduate student in the Clinical Psychology PhD program at the University of Washington under the mentorship of Dr. Mary Larimer. Her research and clinical interests focus on (1) identifying and understanding precursors of substance use, (2) developing and testing prevention and intervention methods for substance use disorders, (3) developing strategies to mitigate substance-related harms, and (4) applying advanced quantitative methods.

Benjamin F. Shepherd, MS, is a PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology at Nova Southeastern University. His research explores clinically-relevant mechanisms of risk and resilience underlying behavioral health disparities faced by LGBTQ+ communities, using an intersectional lens, to inform treatment and prevention efforts. Benjamin received funding from the RSA Doctoral Student Small Grants Program to support his dissertation, which focuses on understanding how various sources of intraminority stress influence alcohol use and related health-risk behaviors over time among gay and bi+ men with multiple stigmatized identities.

Jacob Temphin is a third year doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Memphis. He has obtained an M.S. in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, an advanced certificate in Comparative Effectiveness & Implementation Research Training from the New York University School of Medicine, and a B.A. in philosophy from Princeton University. His primary research interest is the adaptation and implementation of brief alcohol interventions in primary care and community settings.

Felicia Tuchman is an incoming third-year Ph.D. student in clinical psychology at the University of New Mexico. Working under Dr. Katie Witkiewitz, she conducts addiction treatment research. Specifically, Felicia leverages advanced quantitative methods to study harm reduction approaches to substance use disorder treatment. She is also interested in elucidating mechanisms of behavior change during substance use disorder treatment as well as mapping the dynamic roles of environmental context in recovery.

Dr. Tessa Frohe is an NIAAA K01 funded Investigator and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. As full-time faculty at the Harm Reduction Research and Treatment (HaRRT) Center and the Center for the Study of Health and Risk Behaviors, Dr. Frohe collaborates with people who have lived experience of homelessness and drug use, along with other community members and local organizations to co-develop and implement evidence-based interventions that reduce substance-related harms. Dr. Frohe’s current research focuses on best practices around adapting and implementing telehealth stations within permanent supportive housing facilities to improve digital health access and harm reduction treatment for residents.