EDAR Mentors

The EDAR Faculty Mentoring Team is comprised of faculty at MUSC and other institutions across the country. EDAR mentors have expertise in alcohol research, diversity enhancement, leadership, and psychology pre- and post-doctoral training. Together, they have decades of combined expertise evaluating and interviewing candidates for psychology and other mental health training programs. In the EDAR program, mentors provide individual guidance to trainees on professional development, internship and fellowship/faculty application materials, development of interview skills, managing unique challenges faced by URM applicants, and their own skills to become near-peer mentors. EDAR mentors and trainees also collaborate together in Year 2 on a trainee-led research project for submission to the annual RSA meeting.

All of our faculty mentors are described below, and those with availability to work with our incoming cohort are identified:

Cassie Boness, Ph.D.

Dr. Boness is a licensed clinical psychologist and Research Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico’s Center on Alcohol, Substance use, And Addictions (CASAA). Dr. Boness conducts federally-funded research guided by the primary goal of reducing harm and suffering in the lives of people with substance use disorders. She is particularly interested in using mixed methods to develop and refine assessments of alcohol use disorder mechanisms with the eventual goal of facilitating mechanism-based precision medicine.  

Kathryn Bottonari, Ph.D.

Dr. Bottonari is a clinical psychologist at the Ralph H. Johnson VAMC and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at MUSC. Dr. Bottonari's clinic and research leadership has led to advancements in addictions treatment access among rural and underserved Veterans and reduction of access disparities in this population. She plays a key role in internship applicant evaluations and supervises interns in the Charleston Consortium internship program.

Gloria Cain, Ph.D.

Dr. Cain is an Assistant Professor with the Howard University School of Social Work.  Dr. Cain’s research interests include alcohol and substance misuse among African Americans, the efficiency of screening, and brief intervention in community and health care settings. She is a Co-Investigator with the Department of Psychiatry's community-based research on opioid use and Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD) program.  She received her Master of Social Work degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice and a Doctor of Social Work from The Catholic University of America.

Jessica Cronce, Ph.D.

Dr. Cronce is an Associate Professor in the Department of Counseling Psychology and Human Services at the University of Oregon and Director of the Counseling Psychology Center within the HEDCO Clinic. Dr. Cronce is best known for her research on the prevention of high-risk drinking and associated consequences among college students and other young adults, including developing and evaluating brief interventions that utilize Motivational Interviewing (drawing on her training in clinical psychology). Dr. Cronce has twice served as a member of the individual-level strategies development team for the NIAAA’s College Alcohol Intervention Matrix (College AIM) and is also currently supporting research examining campuses’ implementation of this tool in selecting evidence-based prevention strategies. As the first in her family to earn a bachelor’s degree, Dr. Cronce is deeply committed to mentoring students and providing the type of opportunities and guidance that supported her in pursuing her career.

Melissa Anne Cyders, Ph.D.

Dr. Cyders is a Professor of Psychology and the Director of Clinical Training at the IUPUI PhD program in Clinical Psychology. Her research concerns how impulsivity and its neurocognitive underpinnings impart risk for a wide range of clinical problems and disorders. She is most well known for her contributions to the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Model and her work with integrating emotions and impulsive action. She uses a wide range of methods and procedures in her research, from brain imaging, to laboratory-based oral and intravenous alcohol administration, to longitudinal survey designs. Her more recent work has begun to apply her finding from long-term risk projection and laboratory-based modeling to intervention and treatment applications, including understanding impulsivity’s impact on treatment outcomes, how best to intervene on these traits to improve treatment outcomes, and developing best practice guidelines for supporting those in long-term recovery from alcohol and substance use disorders.

Elizabeth D'Amico, Ph.D.

Dr. D'Amico is a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation, an Adjunct Professor at UCLA, and a licensed clinical psychologist. Dr. D'Amico is known for her work developing and evaluating motivational interviewing (MI) interventions with racially and ethnically diverse adolescents and young adults in a variety of settings, including middle schools, primary care, homeless shelters, and teen court. She also has grants focused on prevention for substance use for urban Native American adolescents and young adults that integrate MI with traditional practices, such as beading and Native American cooking. She is currently conducting a large clinical trial to address suicide prevention among Alaska Native young people in the state of Alaska. Dr. D’Amico is committed to mentoring and has received the Mentor of the Year Award twice from RAND.

Sarah Dauber, Ph.D.

Dr. Dauber is Vice President of Clinical Research and Quality Improvement and the director of the Science and Technology of Early Prevention research at Partnership to End Addiction. A developmental psychologist by training, Dr. Dauber directs a federally-funded research program aimed at reducing barriers to substance use and mental health care for pregnant and postpartum people. Her current work is aimed at using technology to address gaps in care for perinatal substance use, and has two primary foci: (1) integrating digital screening and brief interventions for substance use into home visiting programs; and (2) developing and testing mobile health interventions to address risky drinking in the early postpartum period.

Angelo M. DiBello, Ph.D.

Dr. DiBello is an Assistant Professor in the Center of Alcohol & Substance Use Studies and the Applied Psychology Department of the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Brown University, and the Director of the Social Health Addiction & Relationship Processes (SHARP) Laboratory at Rutgers University. Dr. DiBello has dedicated much of his early career to understanding social cognitive factors (e.g., personal attitudes, identity, social norms) associated with substance use behaviors as well as the development of prevention interventions designed to reduce problematic substance use behaviors. He has been the Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on several ongoing and recently completed randomized clinical trials funded by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).

Sarah Feldstein Ewing, Ph.D.

Dr. Feldstein Ewing is a clinical psychologist and the James Prochaska Endowed Professor of Population Health in the Department of Psychology at the University of Rhode Island. In addition to being PI of an NIAAA-sponsored K24 award, she has developed a highly-innovative NIH-funded line of translational research evaluating the connection between basic biological mechanisms (e.g., brain structure, function, connectivity; genetic factors) and youth health risk behavior (e.g., clinical symptoms, treatment outcomes) including alcohol and drug use.

Sherecce Fields, Ph.D.

Dr. Fields is a Professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University. Dr. Fields’ primary degree is in Clinical Psychology with areas of specialization in Child Clinical and Pediatric Psychology. Her research is focused on developing a bio-behavioral understanding of health-risk behaviors in adolescents and emerging adults, with the goal of developing efficacious and effective prevention and cessation interventions, specifically for use in disadvantaged populations. Dr. Fields’ research focuses on behavioral decision-making (with an emphasis on impulsivity) as a trans-disease process in health risk behaviors. Her research draws attention to self-regulatory and self-control pathways to behavior, modeling both their causes and consequences in order to better inform intervention efforts. Specifically, she is interested in how behavioral decision-making and other family, process and psychosocial factors interact to affect prevention and treatment outcomes for health behaviors. Her primary research examines factors related to the initiation and maintenance of addictive behaviors (specifically in children and adolescents). Her secondary research line extends the knowledge gained from addiction research to eating behavior, obesity, and subsequent diabetes risk. In addition, she has an interest in information and communication technologies that might influence behavioral decision making, with a particular focus on the prediction, prevention, and treatment of addiction and eating behavior. Recent work explores novel applications of remote-health technology, ‘serious’ video games, and other computer-mediated technologies that can inform and influence behavioral decision making. Dr. Fields received her master’s (2004) and Ph.D. (2008) in Clinical Psychology from the University of South Florida. She has bachelor’s degrees in Chemistry and Psychology from Duke University (1998).

Alan Francis, Ph.D.

Dr. Francis’ active research interests are directed at understanding psychiatric disorders such as ADHD comorbid with substance abuse disorders using cognitive neuroscience methodologies. He is interested in the relationship of psychiatric disorders to substance abuse and how these individually and in combination affect brain structure, function, connectivity and cognitive function. To accomplish these objectives, he has been using multimodal neuroimaging analysis, which consists of advanced software, running on high performance Linux platforms, applied to the analysis of brain structure, functional connectivity and metabolic differences.

As Director of the Transcranial Electrical Neuromodulation Research (TENOR) laboratory, he has been using neuromodulation techniques such as transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) as mechanisms of interventions in psychiatric disease and addictions. Of interest to him are whether the changes in the brain wrought by TMS and TDCS are transient or permanent and how these could be used in the treatment of childhood ADHD, Alcohol use disorder and other addictions.

Rachel Gunn, Ph.D.

Dr. Gunn is a licensed clinical psychologist and an Assistant Professor at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies (CAAS) in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown University. Dr. Gunn has expertise in the etiology and behavioral pharmacology of alcohol and cannabis use. Her current work utilizes mixed-methods approaches to understand the antecedents, patterns, and consequences of alcohol and cannabis use in a variety of populations. Methods include ecological momentary assessment, transdermal alcohol biosensors, and a variety of laboratory measures including alcohol and cannabis administration. Dr. Gunn's ongoing NIH-funded projects examine the impact of simultaneous alcohol and cannabis use on alcohol consumption and consequences and the impact of perinatal cannabis use on acute and longitudinal mental health outcomes.

Christian Hendershot, Ph.D.

Dr. Hendershot is a licensed clinical psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also serves as coordinator for the Addiction Medicine track within the UNC School of Medicine Clinical Psychology Internship program. His research integrates behavioral, cognitive and psychopharmacology methods to study risk factors for alcohol use, and to evaluate candidate treatments in clinical trials. His research has also included studies examining genetic and psychosocial influences on alcohol use in racial subpopulations.

Cathryn Glanton Holzhauer, Ph.D.

Dr. Holzhauer is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at University of Connecticut School of Medicine and Research Psychologist at the VA Central Western Massachusetts (VACWM). At VACWM, she is a mentor and supervisor in the predoctoral psychology internship program. Her NIH- and VA-funded research is focused on women with alcohol use disorders and those with co-occurring emotional disorders. Currently, she is completing a VA funded career development award examining stress-related alcohol use among women veterans with and without posttraumatic stress disorder.

Traci Kennedy, Ph.D.

Dr. Kennedy is a clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Her research involves understanding and mitigating momentary risk for real-world alcohol use and problems, with a focus on inhibitory control and impulsivity. Through an NIAAA-supported K23 Award, she is developing and testing a novel mHealth intervention that targets momentary inhibitory control to reduce problematic alcohol use among young adults. Dr. Kennedy is passionate about mentoring students, clinical psychology interns, and trainees, and she contributes to coordinating departmental DEI education and training activities.

Ben Lewis, Ph.D.

Dr. Lewis is an assistant professor at the University of Florida. As an assistant professor, Dr. Lewis remains in the Neurocognitive Laboratory. He is involved in several ongoing research projects, including the direction of a Career Development Award (K01) from the National Institute of Alcohol & Alcoholism (NIAAA) received in 2018.

Cristina Lopez, Ph.D.

Dr. Lopez is an Associate Professor and clinical psychologist with a dual appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the College of Nursing at MUSC. Dr. Lopez serves as the Diversity Officer in the College of Nursing and Co-Director of the NIH- funded Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Special Populations Core. She is active in mentoring predoctoral psychology interns and postdoctoral fellows focused on health disparities and has received federal funding to investigate evidence-supported treatment modalities for underserved populations including individuals at high risk for or living with HIV.

Mary Beth Miller, Ph.D.

Dr. Miller is a licensed clinical psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Missouri. She is a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers and a Diplomate of Behavioral Sleep Medicine. Her research aims to reduce substance-related harm among high-risk groups (e.g., young adults, military/Veterans) via development of effective and efficient prevention, intervention, and treatment. She is particularly interested in the interplay of substance use and sleep disorders, alcohol-induced blackouts, and the process by which feedback on one’s health and behaviors may facilitate behavior change.

Robert Miranda, Jr., Ph.D.

Dr. Miranda is a clinical psychologist and accomplished alcohol researcher and mentor. His program of research focuses on understanding the pathogenic mechanisms of alcohol (and other substance) use and abuse during adolescence and improving innovative therapeutics to treat youth during the early stages of addiction. He has an ongoing NIAAA-sponsored K24 award, under which he become a certified trainer/facilitator in the NIH-supported National Research Mentoring Network skills in culturally responsive mentoring.

Antonio Morgan-Lopez, Ph.D.

Dr. Morgan-Lopez is a quantitative psychologist and Fellow within the Substance Use Prevention, Evaluation and Risk (SUPER) Program at RTI International. Dr. Morgan-Lopez’s research focuses on developing advances in measurement and analysis in behavioral intervention contexts using his specialized expertise in novel design and quantitative methods. He leads a monthly mentorship and writing group which focuses on racial/ethnic disparities as part of an NIAAA sponsored virtual clinical trial project that is harmonizing data from over 4,000 participants.

Angela Moreland, Ph.D.

Angela Moreland, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center (NCVC) at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Moreland’s research interests focus on prevention, treatment, and consequences of interpersonal violence among disadvantaged populations; as well as dissemination and implementation of evidence-based practice for victims of interpersonal violence and their families. Dr. Moreland has expertise in consequences, stressors, and available resources and treatments related to substance use among women, with specific expertise in opioid use disorder and medication assisted treatment among women. Dr. Moreland serves as a core member of South Carolina’s 21st Cures Initiative, to improve access to treatment for opioid use disorder in South Carolina, as well as a Co-Investigator on the NIDA Clinical Trials Network Southern Consortium Node.

Rosaura Orengo-Aguayo, Ph.D.

Dr. Orengo-Aguayo is an Assistant Professor and bilingual clinical psychologist at the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center (NCVC) in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at MUSC. Dr. Orengo-Aguayo's federally-funded program of research focuses on the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based interventions in low resourced environments within the U.S., Latin and Central America, and the Caribbean, and addressing mental health disparities for underserved trauma-exposed youth. She provides clinical and research supervision to psychology interns, NIH-funded postdoctoral psychology fellows, and psychiatry fellows, most of whom are trainees from underrepresented backgrounds.

Megan Patrick, Ph.D.

Dr. Patrick's research program focuses on the development and consequences of adolescent alcohol and drug use and risky sexual behaviors. Her interests include motivation and decision-making, the prevention of health risk behaviors, statistical methods for modeling behavior and behavior change, and mobile and web-based survey methodology. She has been the PI and Co-I of numerous NIH-funded projects. Her current studies focus on high-intensity drinking, simultaneous alcohol and marijuana use, and interventions to reduce consequences of young adult substance use.

Sarah L. Pedersen, Ph.D.

Dr. Pedersen is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Pedersen is a licensed clinical psychologist with a long-standing interest in treating and researching heavy substance use and substance use disorders. Her research is centered on integrating environmental and individual factors to identify proximal points of intervention that drive substance use inequities in minoritized populations. Her current research is examining racial discrimination experiences and chronic stress exposure in relation to the acute effects of alcohol and alcohol problems. Dr. Pedersen utilizes both naturalistic and lab-based methods to capture experiences as they unfold prior to, during, and after alcohol or substance use. Dr. Pedersen is Chair of the Diversity, Inclusivity, Cultural Humility, and Equity committee for Western Psychiatric Hospital’s clinical psychology internship and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry’s Research Equity and Community Health Collaborative.

Kimberly Raab-Graham, Ph.D.

Dr. Raab-Graham is a professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest University. The Raab-Graham Lab seeks to understand the biological processes that underlie learning and memory. Ongoing studies in the laboratory suggest that synaptic efficacy requires a “yin and yang” approach to protein synthesis. Often in neuropathological conditions (Alcohol Use Disorder, Substance Use Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, and comorbidies), the balance between translation and repression is disrupted, favoring one state over the other (elevated or reduced protein synthesis). Our experimental approach ranges from molecules to behavior. We use unbiased approaches of mass spectrometry and RNA sequencing, to identify proteins and RNA near synapses. We develop assays to visualize protein synthesis and new synapse formation in dendrites. Together, these approaches allow us to identify new drug treatments that restore the balance in synaptic/dendritic protein synthesis to treat disease. 

Lara Ray, Ph.D.

Dr. Ray is a clinical psychologist and Professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA. Dr. Ray's prolific program of research combines clinical and experimental psychopharmacology with the goal of developing more effective alcohol treatments. She is an NIAAA K24 awardee and an accomplished mentor to junior alcohol investigators from diverse backgrounds.

Elizabeth Santa Ana, Ph.D.

Dr. Santa Ana is a clinical psychologist at the Charleston VAMC and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at MUSC. Dr. Santa Ana is Associate Director of the Charleston Health Equity and Rural Outreach Innovation Center (HEROIC), and Co- Director of the VA Advanced Fellowship in Mental Illness Research and Treatment (MIRECC) at the Charleston VAMC. Her research focuses on testing new modalities to improve delivery of evidence-based interventions, particularly innovative methods for delivering treatments in ways that are practical, feasible, and provide greater accessibility for patients with addictive disorders.

Joseph Schacht, Ph.D.

Dr. Schacht is an Associate Professor and licensed clinical psychologist in the Division of Addiction Science, Prevention, and Treatment of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, where he directs the Translational Addiction Imaging Laboratory. His work focuses on developing novel pharmacological treatments for alcohol and substance use disorders, using behavioral genetics, functional neuroimaging, and human laboratory methods.

Amelia Talley, Ph.D.

Dr. Talley is a social-personality psychologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Texas Tech University. Her program of research focuses on investigating predictors of alcohol use among sexual minority populations. Dr. Talley also serves as the Chair of the Diversity Committee for the Research Society on Alcoholism (RSA).

Rachel Tomko, Ph.D.

Dr. Tomko is a clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Addiction Sciences Division of the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at MUSC. Dr. Tomko conducts federally-funded research aimed at 1) understanding the person-specific mechanisms that maintain alcohol and drug use, identifying predictors of treatment response, and developing treatment decision-making algorithms, and 2) removing methodological barriers in the research process to expedite novel treatment development. She participates actively in internship application evaluations and mentors interdisciplinary trainees at the pre and post-doctoral levels.

Frances Wang, Ph.D.

Dr. Wang is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Wang is a clinical psychologist whose research focuses on genetic and environmental risk factors for alcohol use disorders. She is also particularly interested in understanding the causes of co-occurrence among mental health problems, with the ultimate goal of improving diagnosis, prevention, and treatment.

Rose Marie Ward, Ph.D.

Rose Marie Ward, PhD examines college student alcohol consumption and sexual assault. In addition, she has examined the relationship between social media use and alcohol consumption. When examining alcohol-related consequences, she is particularly interested in alcohol-related blackouts.

Sylia Wilson, Ph.D.

Dr. Wilson's research examines the developmental etiology of psychopathology, with a particular focus on substance use and depression. Her research integrates developmental, clinical, and neuroscience methods, and takes a lifetime developmental perspective that includes infants, children, adolescents, and adults. She uses study designs that are causally and genetically informative, including longitudinal, high-risk family, and twin designs, and takes a multimodal approach that includes behavioral, observational, neurocognitive, psychophysiological, and MRI methods.

Katie Witkiewitz, Ph.D.

Dr. Katie Witkiewitz is a Professor of Psychology at the University of New Mexico.  Her research examines treatment of substance use disorder, with an emphasis on harm reduction, recovery processes, and applying advanced quantitative research methods to better understand changes in alcohol and drug use behavior over time.  Dr. Witkiewitz is also a licensed clinical psychologist and has worked on the development, evaluation, and dissemination of mindfulness-based relapse prevention for substance use disorder.

Caitlin Wolford-Clevenger, Ph.D.

Dr. Wolford-Clevenger is a licensed clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is an Early Career Award Recipient through the NIAAA. Dr. Clevenger's translational research program focuses on the etiology and treatment of alcohol use disorder and its consequences, particularly suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Moreover, she has a special interest in advancing our understanding and treatment of these issues in minoritized groups including the LGBTQ+ community.