People

Director

Chandra A. Reynolds (chandra.reynolds@ucr.edu)
[Ph.D., University of Southern California, 1994]

Dr. Reynolds is currently Professor of Psychology at UCR. Her research interests center around the interrelationships between health and cognition across development. She directs projects that consider the genetic and environmental etiologies of cognitive aging, including gene pathways and their possible interaction with environmental factors.  Additional projects include examinations of early life factors and contexts that influence cognitive, physical health and well-being profiles into early adulthood and across the lifespan and the implications of spouse similarity to well-being, health and longevity.

Graduate Students

Loryana Vie (lvie001@ucr.edu)

Loryana studied at Pomona College, where she graduated Cum Laude with a B.A. in Psychology. She is a 5th year graduate student in the Social-Personality Psychology program at UC Riverside and is currently working on research under the direction of Dr. Chandra A. Reynolds and Dr. Howard S. Friedman.  Her research interests include studying the relationships between marriage, personality, health and longevity using data from the 8-decade long Terman Life Cycle Study.  For her dissertation, she is exploring predictors and outcomes of social influences on health behaviors in a sample of college students.

Catalina Zavala (czava001@ucr.edu)

Catalina is currently a Developmental Psychology graduate student working towards her PhD.  Catalina received her B.A. in Psychology with High Honors from CSU San Bernardino and recently received her M.A. in Psychology at UC Riverside. Her interests include genetic and environmental factors that impact cognitive development across the life span.  Her research interests have involved exploring the predictive value of socioeconomic status measures, including subjective measures, on cognitive change. Additionally, Catalina is interested in the impact of Apolipoprotein E on cognition across the human life span and within historical cohorts.

Ashley A. Ricker (arick002@ucr.edu)

Ashley is a second year Developmental Psychology graduate student working on her PhD in Psychology at the University of California, Riverside under the direction of Dr. Chandra A. Reynolds. She entered UCR with a B.A. in Psychology and a B.S. in Family Studies/Human Development from the University of Arizona where she graduated Cum Laude. Her broad research interests include early life factors that influence cognitive development throughout the lifespan as well as behavioral and genetic influences on the emergence of cognitive decline. Her current research examines the relationship between early life stress and changes in both memory as well as perceptual speed performance.

Brittany L. Bannon (brittany.bannon@email.ucr.edu)

Brittany received her B.A. in Psychology from Tufts University, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude. She is currently a graduate student at UC Riverside working towards her PhD in Social-Personality and Health Psychology under the direction of Drs. Chandra A. Reynolds and M. Robin DiMatteo.  Her research interests include the area of mind-body connections, or how psychological and social factors (both intrapersonal and interpersonal) interact throughout the lifespan to shape health outcomes and subjective well-being. 

Postdoctoral Fellow

Briana N. Horwitz, PhD (bhorwitz@ucr.edu)

Dr. Horwitz is a F32 postdoctoral fellowship awardee who spends time at Penn State and UC Riverside. Her expertise lies in family processes and well-being outcomes in childhood and adulthood. She is currently evaluating informative twin-family data in order to examine mate similarity processes for marital satisfaction, well-being, and personality. 

Undergraduate Research Assistants

     
    Sophia Rhetta             Ryan Hiroto              Evelyn Becerra        William Munoz

Lab Alumni

Archana B. Balasubramanian, PhD
Archana completed her PhD in Psychology at UCR in June 2010. Her research topics included the contributions of stress and inflammation on cognitive change.  She is now a postdoctoral fellow at the UCI Mind Research Unit.

Jennifer Koontz, PhD
Jennifer completed her PhD in Psychology at UCR in September 2010. Her research topics included the prediction of dementia subtypes via cognitive and vascular risk trajectories. She is now a postdoctoral fellow at the UCI Mind Research Unit.

Research Opportunities