Director:
Jeffrey M. Spielberg – jmsp@udel.edu – CV
Dr. Spielberg is an Associate Professor of Clinical Science in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Delaware. He completed his doctoral work in Clinical/Community Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in the Institute for Personality and Social Research (IPSR) and the Institute for Human Development (IHD) at the University of California, Berkeley. Before coming to UDel, Dr. Spielberg was Associate Director of Neuroimaging Analysis Development in the Neuroimaging Research for Veterans Center at VA Boston.
Associated Faculty:
Keith Bredemeier – kbredem@udel.edu
Dr. Bredemeier is the Director of the Institute for Community Mental Health Clinic and an Assistant Professor of Clinical Science in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. He received his doctoral degree in Clinical/Community Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, including a predoctoral internship at Brown University. He stayed at Brown for a postdoctoral fellowship, and completed a second fellowship with Aaron Beck M.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. Before coming to UDel, Dr. Bredemeier was Director of Research Training at the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at UPenn. Dr. Bredemeier is involved in several CAD lab projects focused on anxiety-related disturbances in threat perception.
Graduate Students:
Jeremy Rudoler – rudoler@udel.edu
Jeremy is a fourth year clinical graduate student in the CAD lab. Before coming to UD, Jeremy received his B.A. in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked in the Center for Autism Research. Jeremy also worked as a research assistant for 3 years at the Stanford Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Lab. His research interests include the neural mechanisms associated with maladaptive emotional symptoms and developing effective treatments for mood disorders.
Leah Church – lchurch@udel.edu
Leah is a third year clinical graduate student in the CAD lab. Before joining the CAD lab as a graduate student, she was our lab manager for two years. She graduated from Temple University, where she received her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Cognitive Neuroscience. Her main research interests include examining developmental and neural mechanisms of internalizing pathology as well as sex and gender differences in such mechanisms.
Julia Merker – jmerker@udel.edu
Julia is a second year clinical graduate student in the CAD lab. Before joining the CAD lab, she worked as a research assistant in the Neurobiology of Fear lab at McLean Hostpital. She graduated from Tufts University, where she received her B.S. in Biopsychology. Her main research interests include examining the neurobiological and endocrinological mechanisms underlying differences in the onset and maintenance of psychopathology.
Lab Managers:
Ruby Smith – rmsmith@udel.edu
Ruby began as one of our lab managers/postbacs in 2022, before which she graduated with B.A.’s in both Psychology and Writing, Rhetoric, and Communications from Transylvania University. She is interested in investigating the neural mechanisms that support second-language acquisition in adolescents, as well as investigating the brain networks involved in the development of internalizing disorders in adolescence.
Lab Alumni:
Leah Green was our lab manager/postbac for 1.5 years, before which she graduated from William & Mary with a B.S. in Psychological Sciences. She is currently working as a Support Services Coordinator at Girls Inc. of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey.
Melanie Matyi completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Science in the CAD lab in 2023. She is currently completing a postdoc at the Frontotemporal Degeneration Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on understanding how affective systems interact with other regulatory systems (i.e., emotion X cognition interactions) with the goal of identifying the ways in which these interactions go awry in mental illness.
Nadia Bounoua completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Science in 2023, working jointly with the CAD lab and Dr. Naomi Sadeh. She is currently an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park. Her research seeks to examine the interplay of environmental, neurobiological, and affective mechanisms underlying risk-taking behaviors across the lifespan.
Kaleigh Wieand was our lab manager for 2 years, before which she was an undergraduate RA in the lab for 3 years. She graduated from the University of Delaware with a B.S. in Neuroscience and minors in Spanish and Forensic Science. She is currently a Data Manager for PEDSNet at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania.
Emily Heilner was an undergraduate RA in the CAD lab for three years. She graduated from UD with a B.S. in Neuroscience and a B.A. in Psychology. She is currently a postbac at the Laboratory for Healthy Minds at Yale University School of Medicine.
Samantha Rodriguez. Samantha was our lab manager for 1 year. She graduated from UD with a B.S. in Neuroscience and a B.A. in Sociology. She is currently in the Cognition, Brain, and Behavior program at The University of New Mexico studying neural networks related to decision-making, aggression, and callousness in violent offenders.
Frequent Collaborators:
- Amit Anand – Massachusetts General Hospital
- Ayala Arad – Tel Aviv University
- Marie Banich – University of Colorado, Boulder
- Sebi Cioaba – University of Delaware (Department of Mathematical Sciences)
- Ron Dahl – University of California, Berkeley
- Jasmeet Pannu Hayes – The Ohio State University
- Wendy Heller – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Greg Miller – University of California, Los Angeles
- Eric Nelson – Nationwide Children’s Hospital
- Daniel Pine – NIMH
- David Salat – VA Boston Healthcare System/Harvard Medical School
- Center on the Developing Adolescent – University of California, Berkeley
- Neuroimaging Research for Veterans (NeRVe) Center – VA Boston Healthcare System
