The CIRC Center Team
The CIRC Center is a collaborative program between Transitions ACR at UMass Chan Medical School and the Temple University Collaborative at Temple University.
Leadership
Kathryn Sabella, PhD, Co-Director
Affiliation: Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Director of the Transitions to Adulthood Center for Research, iSPARC, Department of Psychiatry, UMass Chan Medical School
Dr. Sabella received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts Boston after spending over 10 years as a research project manager. She has led multiple research projects that examine the lived experiences of young adults with SMHC, including young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially pertaining to how they manage school, work, and their mental health conditions. She uses qualitative and quantitative methods to create new knowledge on this population that can inform the development and adaptation of social-behavioral interventions that can improve outcomes of this population. She is the Director of Research on the current Learning and Working RRTC and is PI of a NIDILRR-funded field-initiated grant that developed the logic model and implementation materials of the bryt intervention.
Liz Thomas, PhD, Co-Director
Affiliation: Assistant Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Temple University College of Public Health
Dr. Thomas is a psychologist and mental health services researcher with a background in psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery-oriented treatment of individuals with serious mental illnesses. She is co-director of CIRC and an investigator within the Temple University Collaborative on Community Inclusion. Her work particularly centers on understanding and addressing the community participation needs and desires of young adults with serious mental illnesses, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds. View her Temple University faculty profile
Kristen Roy-Bujnowski, MA, Operations Director
Affiliation: Research Program Manager II at Transitions ACR within iSPARC, Department of Psychiatry, UMass Chan Medical School
Investigators & Project Leads
Kyra Baker-Short, MSRT
Affiliation: Community Inclusion Specialist with the Temple University Collaborative on Community Inclusion of Individuals with Psychiatric Disabilities
Kyra has developed interventions for NIDILRR-funded research studies in the areas of supported education and campus engagement, leisure and recreation, transportation, and parenting. She also owns a private coaching practice providing individualized supported education coaching to current and hopeful college students living with significant mental health issues and other disabilities. Kyra has a rich background as a storyteller and theatre artist. She is passionate about supporting individuals with serious mental health issues to shift focus from illness and recovery narratives to developing stories of community participation as friends, students, parents, professionals, and partners, just like everyone else. Kyra's original storytelling work has been produced by First Person Arts, The Philadelphia SoLow Festival, and featured on NPR. View her personal website
Eugene Brusilovskiy, MUSA
Affiliation: Temple University Collaborative on Community Inclusion. I'll be a co-investigator on a CIRC Center project.
Since 2010, Eugene has been the Director of the Laboratory on Geography, Mobility and Disability at Temple University. His research interests include the use of innovative technologies and analytical tools to examine the predictors of various health-related outcomes. He has served as co-PI on numerous Federally-funded longitudinal and cross-sectional studies that use a variety of GIS, statistical, and data mining tools to get a better understanding of the environmental and individual-level factors that may be associated with community mobility, participation, and inclusion of individuals with disabilities. See the complete list of Eugene's publications.
Kathryn Burke, PhD
Affiliation: Research Assistant Professor, Special Education, Department of Teaching and Learning, and Associate Director, Institute on Disabilities, both within the College of Education and Human Development at Temple University
Marsha Ellison, PhD
Affiliation: Professor of Psychiatry and Director of Knowledge Translations at Transitions ACR within iSPARC, Department of Psychiatry, UMass Chan Medical School
Barbara Ferman, PhD
Affiliation: Professor of Political Science at Temple University
Dr. Ferman is the founder and Executive Director of the University Community Collaborative, a media-based, social justice initiative for high school and college students. She has published four books and numerous articles on education politics, urban policy, community development, racial integration, youth development, and pedagogy.
Paul Hyry-Dermith, PhD
Affiliation: National Director of bryt, Brookline Center for Community Mental Health
Paul Hyry-Dermith is the National Director of bryt at the Brookline Center for Community Mental Health. Prior to this role, he worked as a principal and then assistant superintendent in the Holyoke (MA) Public Schools. He began his career working in adult and family literacy and public health before becoming a K-12 administrator. He holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in Philosophy and a Doctorate in Education.
Megan Kelly, PhD
Affiliation:
Spencer Lawson, PhD
Affiliation: Assistant Professor, Law & Psychiatry Program, iSPARC, Department of Psychiatry, UMass Chan Medical School
Spencer G. Lawson, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor within the Law & Psychiatry Program in the Implementation Science and Practice Advances Research Center (iSPARC) at UMass Chan Medical School. He is also an Affiliate Member of the Early Justice Strategies (EJS) Lab at George Mason University. Dr. Lawson’s career mission is to manage and prevent behavioral health conditions among people across multiple points in the criminal justice system through implementation and deployment-focused research of data-driven risk screening and assessment and risk-need-responsivity approaches. Issues of fairness and bias, especially among individuals with minoritized racial and ethnic identities, also permeate throughout his scholarship. Dr. Lawson’s funding comes from federal sources (e.g., National Institute of Justice, National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research), along with state funding from Indiana, Massachusetts, and Colorado, and philanthropic funding (e.g., John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation). Currently, Dr. Lawson is a W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow and Principal Investigator on an early career award from the National Institute of Justice to work with the Massachusetts Department of Correction on assessing racial and ethnic disparities within their objective prison classification system.
Alicia Lucksted, PhD
Affiliation: University of Maryland School of Medicine, Dept. of Psychiatry, Division of Psychiatric Services Research
Akihoko Masuda, PhD
Affiliation:
Ethan Moitra, PhD
Affiliation: Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Dr. Moitra is a clinical psychologist. His research focuses on the application of acceptance- and mindfulness-based interventions to support treatment engagement, particularly among people with HIV and those at risk for HIV infection, as well as enhancing social support as a pathway to improved mental health. Dr. Moitra also leads research projects that leverage mHealth applications to support patients during transitions in their mental health care. Read his full bio
Michelle Munson, PhD
Affiliation: Professor of Social Work, New York University
Ieshia Nelson, MA
Affiliation:
Caterina Roman, PhD
Affiliation: Professor, Department of Criminal Justice, Temple University with a secondary appointment in the Center for Urban Bioethics, Lewis Katz School of Medicine
Gretchen Snethen, PhD, CTRS
Affiliation: Associate Director for the Temple University Collaborative on Community Inclusion
Natalie Stollon, LCSW, MPH
Affiliation: Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Natalie Stollon, LCSW, MPH is a clinical social worker who has been working with youth and young adults with disabilities in various capacities for over 15 years, including direct service, clinical care, program development and research. She is currently the Clinical Program Manager for Career Path, an employment program for youth with a chronic illness or disability at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). In addition, Natalie is one of the social workers in CHOP’s Adult Care and Transition Team (ACTT) and is the Director of Community Collaboration for the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) Fellowship program at CHOP.
Natalie is passionate about improving systems and services for youth with disabilities and chronic conditions, especially those with experiences with foster care, homelessness, and/or as young parents.
Natalie received her Masters in Social Work (MSW) and Masters in Public Health (MPH) from the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently a part-time lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Social Policy and Practice. View her Full Profile
Gina Vincent, PhD
Affiliation: Professor of Psychiatry, Co-Director of the Law & Psychiatry Program, and faculty in the Implementation Science & Practice Advances Research Center (iSPARC) at UMass Chan Medical School
Dr. Vincent received her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology with a Forensic Psychology and Law Specialization from Simon Fraser University. Dr. Vincent has received funding from the National Institute of Justice, NIMH, NIDA, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and OJJDP for studies relevant to risk for reoffending or violence, implementation outcomes of risk assessment and risk-need-responsivity in legal settings, and behavioral health and substance misuse concerns among youth. She is the author of the Risk Assessment in Juvenile Probation: A Guidebook for Implementation manual and has conducted multiple studies to examine racial equity of different risk screening and assessment instruments.
Dr. Vincent has assisted over 50 county or state juvenile justice agencies with the creation and validation of risk screening tools and/or selection and implementation of risk-needs assessments for case planning. She has received multiple federal grants to study the effectiveness of this implementation on case management. She has over 80 publications in the areas of risk assessment, implementation of risk-needs assessment in juvenile justice, adolescent substance misuse, callous-unemotional traits, and mental health symptoms in justice settings.
Recai Yucel, PhD
Affiliation: Professor of Biostatistics, Biostatistics Core Director, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, College of Public Health, Temple University
Consultants
Maryann Davis, PhD, Senior Advisor
Affiliation: Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry (Psychology), former Director of the Implementation Science and Practice Advances Research Center, and former Director of the Transitions to Adulthood Center for Research, in the Department of Psychiatry at UMass Chan Medical School
Dr. Davis is a research psychologist with a distinguished career studying transition-age youth and young adults with serious mental health conditions and co-occurring substance use disorders. Her wide-ranging research on this population addresses three areas: (1) developing and testing individualized and developmentally tailored interventions, including for those involved with justice systems, (2) completing schooling and launching adult work lives, and (3) identifying and addressing systems barriers to good treatment, supports, and services for them. Her research emphasizes the involvement of youth and young adults with serious mental health conditions as partners in the design, conduct, and dissemination of this research. Dr. Davis has published extensively and received substantial U.S. Federal grant funding on these topics and has served on numerous federal, national and state committees related to this work.
Mark Salzer, PhD, Senior Advisor
Affiliation: Professor, College of Public Health at Temple University and Director of the Temple University Collaborative on Community Inclusion
Project Staff
Samantha Hersh
Clinical Research Coordinator
Jonathan Lerew
Project Coordinator
Deirdre Logan, BA
Project Manager III
Tracy Neville, BA
Research Coordinator II
Debbie Nicolellis, MS, CRC, CPRP
Training Director
Mei Pearlstein
Research Coordinator I
Robin Tasca
Communications Specialist
