Research Projects

My research seeks to understand the transdiagnostic mechanisms of reward dysfunction that bridge maladaptive eating, substance use, and serious mental illness (SMI). The long-term goal is to leverage this understanding to develop real-time, personalized monitoring tools that can enhance psychiatric assessment and facilitate preemptive interventions.

🍔 Maladaptive Eating & Hyper-Palatable Foods

Understanding the properties of foods that promote addictive-like eating, focusing on the food environment and individual behaviors.

Key Projects:

• Investigated the historical role of U.S. tobacco companies in disseminating hyper-palatable foods.
• Demonstrated that real-time consumption of these foods is associated with increased energy intake using EMA.
• Used Item Response Theory to identify sex differences in food-specific cravings.
• Systematic review of EMA studies on food craving.

💻 Precision & Computational Psychiatry

Applying computational methods to understand transdiagnostic mechanisms in SMI and to leverage novel technology (e.g, LLMs) for enhancing clinical assessment.

Key Projects:

• Analyzed a intensive longitudinal data set to understand transdiagnostic symptom changes in relation to daily symptoms and speech features from outpatients with affective and psychotic disorders.
• Leveraged large language models (LLMs) to derive clinically meaningful information (e.g., sentiment) from naturalistic speech.
• Using LLMs to classify PTSD conditions based on patients’ interview transcripts.

🍷 Substance Use & Reward-Driven Behaviors

Investigating shared mechanisms linking substance use with other reward-driven health behaviors, particularly food valuation.

Key Projects:

• (Dissertation) proposed to examine acute effects of alcohol on the momentary valuation of hyper-palatable foods using EMA.
• Studied links between alcohol-free reinforcement and co-use of alcohol and cannabis in college students.