Research Staff
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Dr Jack Andrews
Adolescent mental health; Adolescent risk taking; Peer influnece; Social networks; Social cogition; Social inequalities; School based interventions for mental health
Dr Kathryn Baker
Learning and memory, fear, extinction, adolescence, d-cycloserine, retrieval-extinction, calcium.
My research examines how fear is inhibited in the adolescent brain. Adolescence is a period of increased vulnerability to anxiety disorders and the brain undergoes substantial maturation during adolescence, particularly in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), a region critical for inhibiting fear in adults. I am interested in how adolescents may be less efficient in utilising prefrontal regions to inhibit fear.
Dr Sarah Jane Baracz
Sarah is currently a Senior Research Associate in the School of Psychology. She completed her PhD in 2015, and since then has held a post-doctoral research position at the University of Sydney, a visiting post-doctoral position at Yale University, and was a Lecturer at Macquarie University. Her research has significantly furthered the understanding of the neurocircuitry involved in oxytocin as a therapy for drug addiction, it has progressed the development of novel oxytocin compounds, and has probed the neural mechanisms common to drug addiction and depression.
Dr. Yulisha Byrow
My current program of research focuses on identifying psychological mechanisms contributing to the mental health and psychosocial adaptation of refugees during resettlement.
Dr Julie Chow
My research examines how people learn about cause and effect relationships, and how differences in what is inferred when presented with identical information may result in opposing beliefs. This is pertinent when determining how people come to form strong pseudoscientific beliefs about ineffective treatments. Causal illusions are thought to be important for understanding the development of pseudoscientific beliefs, and importantly provides insight into how people learn in a variable environment.
Dr James Dunn
Research Areas: Previous and current research projects include: person-in-crowd identification, the strategies supporting superior face identification accuracy, and contextual influences on face identification.
Dr. Justine Fam
My research examines the role of oxytocin, an evolutionarily ancient peptide, in learning and memory. Although oxytocin is well-known for being important for social behahaviours across many species, the mechanisms that support this have not been well-characterised. One possible mechanism of oxytocin's effect is that of enhanced attention to salient cues. Using an associative learning framework, my work examines the effects of oxytocin on cue processing through a combination of pharmacological and chemogenetic techniques to target the oxytocin system.
Dr Jasmine Fardouly
My research focuses on social influences on young people’s mental and physical health. Given the widespread popularity of social media among young people, I am particularly interested in understanding how social media use may impact users’ body image, mood, and eating pathology. I am also interested in positive uses of social media for wellbeing. Beyond social media, I am interested in other factors that influence body image and any stigma experienced because of one’s physical appearance.
Dr Georgette (Georgie) Fleming
Research areas: child clinical psychology; child conduct problems; child callous-unemotional traits; treatment of child conduct problems; online delivery of evidence-based treatment; parenting; parent management training; parent-child interaction therapy
Dr Justine Gatt
Research Interests: Resilience, wellbeing, depression, anxiety, twins, genetic modeling, genotyping, positive/negative life events, trauma, childhood, adolescence and adulthood, MRI and fMRI imaging, DTI, EEG, autonomic functioning, neurocognition, multivariate modeling, structural equation (path) modeling, e-health online tools, smartphone apps, and wellbeing programs.
