Lab Member – The Center for Evidence-based Mentoring

Ramya Ramadurai

Ramya Ramadurai, MA is a rising 4th year doctoral student at American University in Washington DC, interested in examining factors that enhance therapy outcomes- especially within digital mental health interventions.

After graduating from Boston University in 2016 Ramya was a post-bac research assistant in the CARE Lab at McLean Hospital and is currently a member of the Interpersonal Emotion Lab under the supervision of Dr. Nathaniel R. Herr, as well as an extern at the Washington DC VAMC. Her research has focused on both understanding affective, identity, and relational difficulties in mood and borderline personality disorders, as well as understanding therapeutic processes in digital specialized treatments such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.

She is passionate about harnessing the adaptability and scalability of these interventions to deliver culturally responsive care. Ramya is thrilled to be working with the CEBM team to study implementation processes as well as mechanisms underlying change during app-based interventions.

Saniya Soni

Saniya Soni is an incoming 1st year graduate student at UMass Boston’s Clinical Psychology Doctoral program. She graduated from Drexel University with a degree in psychology and criminal justice, where she conducted research on BIPOC mental health and implemented suicide prevention strategies. Since 2020, she has been working on digital mental health interventions with early phase startups. Her clinical interests include working with young adults of marginalized identities, forensic interventions, and culturally responsive evidence-based practices. She has spoken publicly about the importance of representation in mental healthcare with The JED Foundation, the Epic Foundation, Morgan Stanley, MTV, and CNN. She also co-hosts a podcast called Loudmouth Ladkis, which focuses on the intersection of South Asian and Western identities with an emphasis on mental health.

Emily Hersch

Emily is an incoming 1st-year graduate student at UMass Boston’s Clinical Psychology Doctoral program. Emily completed her undergraduate degree in psychology at Emory University. After graduation, she worked as a lab coordinator at Columbia University and conducted research for a technology startup developing mobile parenting applications. Emily then completed her master’s degree in Clinical Psychology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, where she worked as a research assistant at the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies. Emily’s research interests lie at the intersection of psychology, human computer interaction, and implementation science. She is passionate about increasing the accessibility of mental health services for vulnerable youth and families through the development, evaluation, and implementation of online interventions. She is particularly interested in examining how supportive accountability can increase youth’s engagement with online mental health tools.

Monica Arkin

Monica Arkin received her Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of Michigan in 2015. As an undergraduate student, she was involved in research that examined children’s and adolescents’ psychological resilience in the face of adverse life experiences such as experiencing the death of a parent and exposure to community violence. Following graduation, Monica spent a year in Jerusalem where she interned at the Israel Trauma Coalition and volunteered in the psychiatry department of Hadassah Hospital. For the past three years she has been a research assistant at Child Trends, a non-profit and non-partisan social science research organization committed to improving the lives of children and their families. At UMB, Monica is interested in studying pathways to resilience after exposure to potentially traumatic experiences in both children and caregivers. She will be working with Dr. Jean Rhodes.

Kirsten Christensen, Ph.D.

Matt Hagler, Ph.D.

Cyanea Poon

Cyanea is a 5^th year doctoral candidate at UMass Boston’s Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program. Her research primarily focuses on the influence of social support networks on trauma-exposed youth. When not in the lab, she devotes her time working with adolescents who struggle with mood disorders, self-harm behaviors, and trauma in the therapeutic context, as well as consulting for nonprofits to design program evaluations. In the long term, she hopes to partner with organizations in the Majority World to develop and evaluate culturally-responsive interventions that increase youths’ support network.