Two of the Psychology department’s newest faculty members are already making an impact on the field, and the Association for Psychological Science (APS) has taken notice.
Assistant Professors Lauren Forrest, who joined the College of Arts and Sciences in the fall, and Tina Gupta, who will arrive on campus in fall 2025, were recognized as APS Rising Stars, an award presented to early-career researchers whose innovative work has already helped advance the study of psychology. Both are clinical psychologists who study risk markers for disorders such as severe mental illness, eating disorders and suicide in vulnerable populations.
Fewer than 60 researchers worldwide received the Rising Star designation this year.
The organization also named Psychology department head Sara Hodges an APS fellow for her research on interpersonal perception and social behavior.
“Recognition from our global community of psychologists within the Association for Psychological Science is a tremendous honor," said Elliot Berkman, a psychology professor and divisional associate dean for the Natural Sciences. “The Department of Psychology continues to draw top-notch faculty who are attracted to our longstanding tradition of innovative and impactful research. It’s great to see some of our newest researchers receive recognition for their accomplishments.”
Preventing suicide and eating disorders in LGBTQIA+ populations
Suicide and eating disorders disproportionately impact people in the LGBTQIA+ community, yet much of what we know about them comes from a more privileged subset of the population: those who have the income and access to seek treatment.
Forrest aims to change that by studying at-risk groups through the lens of intersectionality.
“My ultimate goal is to be able to prevent suicide, but the hard part is that if you don’t know what the most potent causes are, it’s hard to develop the most potent interventions,” Forrest said, adding that the causes and risks may be different for people from stigmatized groups. “We need to know where we should be focusing our efforts.”
Both suicide and eating disorders are complex, with multiple layers of risk that can fluctuate from moment to moment. Forrest’s research focuses on understanding those risk processes and how they intersect with factors such as race, rurality, gender and sexual orientation.
“What I’m trying to do is take the methods we use to study more privileged populations and study those who are excluded from the majority of research,” she said. “I’d like to give our best scientific effort to the people we haven’t given it to thus far, but who I would argue really need it.”
Helping youths at risk for severe mental illness
Adolescence is a formative development period. It is also a vulnerable time in a child’s development—and for those who are susceptible to mental health challenges, it’s a common time for clinical symptoms to emerge.
Gupta wants to understand how emotional processes go awry in youths at risk of severe mental illness.
“I am committed to identifying risk markers of severe mental illness, with the ultimate goal of informing and developing intervention strategies and improving the way we identify at-risk youth early,” she said. “I’m also interested in understanding the factors that help protect vulnerable adolescents, promoting their resilience.”
She approaches her research using a variety of different modes, drawing from conceptual models in the literature and utilizing clinical interviews, behavioral measures, psychological approaches and neuroimaging.
“You might see a pattern in the brain that could reflect blunting in the experience of rewards that might not be expressed in the same way during a clinical interview. Or a person might be showing less use of facial expression that’s harder to detect by looking at the brain,” she said.
“That’s the benefit of taking a multidimensional approach to research. You can come at a research question from different angles and discover new ways of thinking about it and more comprehensively interpret your findings.”
—Nicole Krueger, College of Arts and Sciences