Congratulations to the incoming 2017 cohort of PFT fellows!
DeAnnah Byrd Gerontology
Dr. DeAnnah Byrd received her Ph.D. from the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her doctoral research focused on a longitudinal study of black-white disparities in cognitive aging. She also has published in the areas of mental health of college students, infant mortality and discrimination and psychological distress.
Megan Hicks Social Work
Dr. Megan Hicks earned her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Science from the University of Georgia. Her research broadly focuses on the social-ecological model in order to understand the factors that promote or exacerbate the well-being of vulnerable populations. She is primarily interested in community and contextual factors that influence sexual risk behaviors among minority adolescents, specifically looking at how high-quality relationships serve as protective processes. Dr. Hicks has secondary research interests in prevention/intervention programming and program evaluation. As a postdoctoral fellow, she plans to publish manuscripts from her dissertation exploring how risk and protective factors influence sexual risk behaviors among Black young men. She will also begin new collaborative projects examining violence prevention among adolescents."
Jennifer M. Gƒ³mez Clinical Psychology
Dr. Jennifer M. Gƒ³mez, Ford Fellow, received her PhD from University of Oregon in the Department of Psychology. Her research interests lie in trauma psychology, specifically exploring how relational and sociocultural contexts affect trauma outcomes in diverse adolescents and emerging adults. Dr. Gƒ³mez developed cultural betrayal trauma theory (CBTT) to include interpersonal trauma in conjunction with oppression to examine mental health outcomes. As a postdoctoral fellow at Wayne State University, Dr. Gƒ³mez will focus her work on CBTT with Black adolescents and emerging adults, including developing and validating a measure of CBTT. Currently, Dr. Gƒ³mez is working on the publication of additional articles using CBTT and other theoretical frameworks to explore trauma and mental health in ethnically diverse emerging adults. http://jmgomez.org
Amina S. Wofford Microbiology and Cell Biology
Dr. Amina Wofford received her Ph.D. from Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, Alabama, in the Integrative Biosciences Program. Her research interests involve evaluating novel therapeutic strategies for viral infection, specifically Herpesviruses. As a post-doctoral fellow at Wayne State, Dr. Wofford will continue her research aimed at investigating and identifying novel strategies to combat viral infections and understanding the complex relationships that contribute to viral pathogenesis. As a Postdoctoral to Faculty Transition (PFT) Fellow, she aspires to ultimately transition to an independent researcher, a faculty position in which she can continue her research and contribute significantly to the growth and development of Wayne State students interested in science and/or research careers.