Chiemeka Ezie
Aaron S Heller, PhD
Principal Investigator
Aaron is a clinical psychologist and affective neuroscientist who received his BA from UC Berkeley, his PhD from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and postdoctoral training at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is interested in better understanding the temporal dynamics of emotion and how they relate to individual differences in risk for psychopathology. He uses a variety of methods including brain imaging (fMRI), psychophysiological (facial EMG, skin conductance) and mobile Health to better understand these relationships.
Lara Baez
Graduate Student
Prior to attending UM, Lara pursued my undergraduate studies in Behavioral Biology, Psychology and French at Johns Hopkins University, and completed a post baccalaureate fellowship in the Genetic Epidemiology Branch at the National Institutes of Health. She is interested in integrating neuroimaging and ecological momentary assessment to discover how changes in the brain affect real-time emotional fluctuations in individuals with mood disorders.
Brittany Jaso
Graduate Student
Brittany graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in Psychology. She then spent two years as a post-baccalaureate research fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health. Her primary research interests lie in understanding the brain-based mechanisms that relate to the sustainment of positive and negative affect following personally-relevant stressors. She is also interested in applying different neuroimaging techniques (MRI, fMRI, and MRS) to elucidate the relationship between affective regulation and psychopathology.
Nikki Puccetti
Graduate Student
Nikki Puccetti is a graduate student in the adult-track clinical psychology program. She earned her B.A. in Psychology with Research Distinction from The Ohio State University. Nikki is interested in using neuroimaging techniques to study the neural basis of emotion regulation and cognitive-affective interactions in both healthy individuals and those with psychopathology.
William Villano
Staff
Bill is interested in better understanding how reward processing and affective regulation vary between healthy, depressed, and anxious individuals. Bill is also interested in improving psychophysiological methods and measures with the overall goal of understanding how stress reactivity differs across spectra of psychopathology. As a member of the MANATEE Lab, Bill is involved in processing and analysis of fMRI neuroimaging data and Ecological Momentary Analysis (EMA) data collection. In his spare time, Bill practices the trumpet and performs jazz around Miami.
Travis (Rick) Reneau
Undergraduate
Rick is a Computer Science and Psychology double major from St. Augustine, FL. He plans to attend graduate school and his research interests include brain-computer interfaces, affective neuroscience, computational neuroscience, and neurotheology.
Jackie Yang
Undergraduate
Jackie is a Neuroscience and English double major from the Tampa Bay area. Her research interests include affective neuroscience, molecular neuroscience, and neurogenetics. She has previously served as a research assistant under Dr. Damien Pearse at the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and Dr. Kevin Nash at the USF Byrd Alzheimer's Institute in Tampa. She plans to attend medical school, and in her free time enjoys trivia and crosswords.
Travis (Rick) Reneau
Undergraduate
Rick is a Computer Science and Psychology double major from St. Augustine, FL. He plans to attend graduate school and his research interests include brain-computer interfaces, affective neuroscience, computational neuroscience, and neurotheology.
Jackie Yang
Undergraduate
Jackie is a Neuroscience and English double major from the Tampa Bay area. Her research interests include affective neuroscience, molecular neuroscience, and neurogenetics. She has previously served as a research assistant under Dr. Damien Pearse at the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and Dr. Kevin Nash at the USF Byrd Alzheimer's Institute in Tampa. She plans to attend medical school, and in her free time enjoys trivia and crosswords.
Cate Hartley
Collaborator
Cate's research focuses on characterizing the development and dynamics of the learning, memory, and decision-making processes that shape our behavior. She uses a broad array of methodological approaches to examine the cognitive, computational, and neural processes that inform our choices and actions.
Kiara Timpano
Collaborator
Kiara's primary focus lies in researching factors that play a role in the etiology, comorbidity, and maintenance of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders. She is particularly interested in translational factors and integrative risk models, including the role of stress, self-regulatory deficits, and emotional tolerance.
MANATEE Lab Alumni
Our fearless former lab manager is now a medical student at NYU
Ariel Gonzalez
Ariel is currently a research assistant with Angela Laird at FIU
Jesse Winton
Jesse is currently a medical student at the Universtiy of Florida
Jackie Yang
Jackie is currently a medical student at NYU