Our Research Team
Amanda Sheffield Morris, PhD
Lab Co-Director
Dr. Amanda Sheffield Morris is the George Kaiser Family Foundation Chair and Regents Professor in the Department of Psychology at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Morris is a developmental scientist with research interests in parenting, socio-emotional development, and risk and resilience. She is endorsed as an Infant Mental Health Research Mentor, Level IV, and is a certified Trainer of Trainers for Active Parenting programs. Dr. Morris is a Principal Investigator on the NIH funded HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study. Dr. Morris also serves on the ABCD Culture and Environment work group as part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study at LIBR. She has authored numerous articles and chapters on child and adolescent development and the neuroscience of emotion regulation and parenting. Dr. Morris is an Associate Editor for the new Journal Adversity and Resilience Science: Research and Practice published by Springer and she is a researcher for the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity (CIRCA). She is also a co-author of the in-press book, Adverse and Protective Childhood Experiences: A Developmental Perspective published by the American Psychological Association.
Jennifer Hays-Grudo, PhD
Lab Co-Director
Dr.Jennifer Hays-Grudo, PhD, is a Regents Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Center for Health Sciences at Oklahoma State University. She is the Director and Principal Investigator of the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity (CIRCA), an $11.3M, five-year, NIH-funded center grant that coordinates studies on the effects of trauma and poverty on children’s health and development and builds research capacity in northeast Oklahoma. From 2008 to 2013, she was a George Kaiser Family Foundation Chair in Community Medicine at OU-Tulsa, where she led the Tulsa Children’s Project, a highly integrated set of interventions to reduce the effects of intergenerational poverty and adversity. With Dr. Amanda Sheffield-Morris, she is the co-author of "Adverse and Protective Childhood Experiences: A Developmental Perspective", published in 2019 by APA Press, and is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Adversity and Resilience Science (Springer).
To learn more about CIRCA: www.CIRCAOK.com
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Lana Beasley, PhD
Director of Resilience, Adversity, and Interventions
Dian Yu, PhD
Assistant Professor
Dr. Dian Yu is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Oklahoma State University. She got her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Science. Her research focuses on self-regulation development in early childhood to adolescence among low-income racial-ethnical minority families using intensive longitudinal methods.
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Jens Jespersen, PhD
Post-Doctoral Scholar
My name is Jens Jespersen, and I am Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, working at the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity. I received my doctorate in Human Development and Family Science from OSU with an emphasis in infant mental health. My research interests are centered around how early relationships and experiences influence social and emotional development in infants and young children, and how protective experiences influence child and family development and functioning in the context of early adversity. I am a mixed-methods researcher involved with work evaluating various parenting, health, and education programs across the State of Oklahoma.
Devin Barlaan, PhD
Post-Doctoral Scholar
Dr. Barlaan, PhD, is a post-doctoral research fellow through the Department of Psychology at Oklahoma State University. She completed her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at The University of Tulsa in Tulsa, Oklahoma and her pre-doctoral internship at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, Minnesota within the child track emphasis area. Dr. Barlaan is interested in prevention-intervention research, with a particular focus on disrupting the impact of adverse childhood experiences on later mental health outcomes. Clinical interest includes child trauma and mood disorders, parent management training, and pediatric sleep, and using empirically supported treatments to promote optimal health and wellbeing for children and their families.
Jennifer N.H Watrous, MS
Graduate Student
Jennifer N.H. Watrous, M.S., is a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at Oklahoma State University under Dr. Morris. In 2022, she completed her Master of Science in Leadership studies and examined the effects of physical activity on cognition in youth. Her research interests include childhood factors that contribute to or prevent mental illness later in life and multi-modal neuroimaging techniques to assess brain development.
Melissa Dobson, MS
Graduate Student
Melissa Dobson is a graduate student in the Experimental Psychology program at Oklahoma State University working under Dr. Amanda Morris. She received her B.S. in early childhood education and her M.S. in child and adolescent psychology. Her previous professional experience with children formed research interests in social-emotional development and resilience in marginalized child populations, early interventions for developmental disorders, and child-adult relationships.
Hongming Chen, MED
Graduate Student
Courtney Cooper
Graduate Student
Hello! My name is Courtney Cooper. I am a 2nd year graduate student in clinical psychology at OSU. My research interests are in rural mental health and early interventions for emotion dysregulation, trauma, and psychopathology in children and adolescents.
Haley Hall, MS
Graduate Student
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Jerry Root, MA, SPHR
Director of Strategic Initiatives
Jerry graduated from UCO with an undergraduate degree in psychology and went on to get a master’s degree in industrial-organizational psychology from the University of Tulsa. Jerry now serves as the Director of Strategic Initiatives for CIRCA and manages a new stress reduction program for first responders across the state called Mindful First Responders. He is also pursuing a development track to be able to teach Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction programs. Jerry also serves as a board member for Resilient Payne County and as a NEAR Science mentor-trainer.
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Cindy Swimmer, BSBA, CRA
Program Manager
After graduating summa cum laude with a degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in HR Management and Forensic Accounting, Cindy Swimmer went on to work at Rogers State University in accounting, accreditation, and financial research administration. She then moved to the University of Tulsa as a grant manager & accountant before settling at OSU-CHS as Senior Grant Accountant in the Office of Research. In November 2018, she began work on CIRCA as the senior grant accountant as well as remaining in the Office of Research. In November 2019, she began working solely on CIRCA. She continues her work as CIRCA's program manager. She is also a certified research administrator (CRA) through RACC.
Kaylen Smith, BS
Program Coordinator
Kaylen Smith graduated from Oklahoma State University with an undergraduate degree in Psychology. Afterwards, she went on to combine her 10+ years of experience as an artist/freelance photographer with her fascination in human behavior in the field of marketing. After exploring that field, Kaylen came to CIRCA, where she was able to work directly within her passion for psychology, and apply her background in marketing towards community outreach efforts. Kaylen now serves as the Program Coordinator within CIRCA, and assists with various programs within the center.
Undergraduate Assistants
Sage Murry
Current Undergraduate Student
Previous Lab Members
Post-doctoral Fellow (2018-2023)