Principal Investigator Dr. Sheila Crowell | Psychology Professor
Sheila Crowell’s research is focused on mechanisms underlying risk for suicide and severe psychopathology among intentionally self-injuring adolescents. She is particularly interested in researching biological vulnerabilities for emotion dysregulation (ED) and impulsivity and understanding how these vulnerabilities interact with potentiating environmental experiences across development (from conception onward). A unifying theme across her research is to better understand ED, including intergenerational and reciprocal transmission between parent and child, ED as a developmental precursor to psychopathology, psychophysiological, genetic, and epigenetic correlates of ED, and contextual processes contributing to ED within family and peer dynamics. As a lifespan developmental psychopathologist, Dr. Crowell is especially interested in elucidating early targets for intervention and prevention of depression, self-injury, suicide, and personality disorders.
Lynn Nashawi: Lab Manager
Lynn graduated from the University of Oregon with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and in Neuroscience with departmental honors. She joined the ORCHIDS Lab in the fall of 2023 as the first lab manager here at UO. As an undergraduate, she had various experiences in cognitive psychology/neuroscience labs. She is excited to be a part of this team to not only expand upon her research knowledge and skillsets, but to also work alongside a wonderful and dedicated team.
Daria Karraby: Project Coordinator
Daria graduated from UC Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English before participating in the Post-Baccalaureate Program in Psychology at UC Irvine. Throughout her undergraduate and post-bacc career, she has worked in multiple developmental labs and joined the ORCHIDS lab in Fall 2024 as a study coordinator. Her research interests include the developmental necessity of pretend play across cultures and she hopes to pursue a Clinical or Developmental Psychology PhD in the coming years.
Alexa Aringer: Graduate Student
Alexa (she/they) is a first-year Clinical Psychology doctoral student at the University of Oregon under Dr. Sheila Crowell. She transferred from Riverside City College to UC Riverside and graduated in 2020 with Phi Beta Kappa honors (B.S. in Psychology). Broadly, her research focuses on mechanisms of risk and resilience in minoritized youth and integrating biopsychosocial and developmental psychopathology perspectives in different contexts. She is interested in trauma, stress, intergenerational processes, and biophysiological mechanisms that impact health, psychological suffering, and multi-domain functioning. Alexa was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, supporting her from 2025 through 2028. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her partner and pets, watching Netflix, and making really terrible candles.
Nicolette (Nico) Molina: Graduate Student
Nico’s research focuses on preventing suffering and suicide among marginalized populations using a social justice lens to understand how systems of power and oppression interact with individual vulnerabilities to shape suicide risk. In particular, she studies how systems of oppression shape suicide risk for reproductive-age people who may become pregnant. Her aim is to conduct research that may inform policies and interventions that are both ecologically sound and tailored to each community. Clinically, she is drawn to dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) as an approach to help people reduce suffering and strike a balance between accepting and changing their daily lives. Outside of research and clinical work, she enjoys mentoring junior students in pursuing their own research questions and in navigating academia.
Eric Matsunaga: Graduate Student
Eric (he/him) is a first-year Clinical Psychology doctoral student at the University of Oregon. He received his Psychology BA from UC Berkeley in 2020. After graduating, he worked at the Portland DBT Institute (PDBTI) as an outpatient operations and research associate where he was responsible for a diverse array of administrative, research, and clinical tasks. At PDBTI, he accrued ~1,500 clinical hours co-leading and leading DBT skills groups, which has deeply informed his present research pursuits. He is interested primarily in clinical application – i.e., how can researchers in academia and providers in the field work together to disseminate interventions to the communities that need them the most. When turning a blind eye to the stack of research articles he needs to read, he watches movies for the sole purpose of writing a Letterboxd review that he thinks is funny.
Ash Mclaren: Research Assistant
Ash is an undergraduate senior at the University of Oregon. They hope to pursue a research career and intend to use their education and experience to promote awareness and positive change for the mental health of children in underrepresented communities. Their time in the ORCHIDS Lab has allowed them to venture closer to this goal, and they are grateful to be surrounded by a team of such dedicated and compassionate researchers.
Jasmine Klein: Research Assistant
Jasmine is a psychology major especially interested in clinical psychology. Her research interests are mainly focused on infants, young children, and early childhood disorders. She is also interested in how parent behavior during pregnancy and after birth affect children. She is planning to be a therapist in the future and would like to work mainly with children and their parents.
Sophie Derout: Research Assistant
Sophie is a double major in psychology and neuroscience following a pre-med track. She is currently a freshman and will be in the UO graduating class of 2027. Her current research interests reside within the psychology department, specifically mental health topics and prevention. She hopes the research she is involved in can help reduce mental health stigma and provide more information to help the mental health community as a whole.