Experts Guide

Farhadi is an expert on violent extremism, religion and conflict, peacebuilding, geopolitics and geoeconomics, with a particular emphasis on the Great Power Competition in the "Silk Road" region of Central and South Asia.

Brice studies speech and language among bilingual populations in individuals with and without disabilities. He can discuss how two languages interact across sound, meaning, and use, and how this affects special education, speech-language pathology, and education. His clinical expertise focuses on the assessment and treatment of Spanish-English–speaking students and clients.

Salloum's primary research interest is in the treatment of childhood trauma. She is specifically interested in examining psychosocial interventions for young children, children, adolescentsa and their families, who have been exposed to various traumatic events such as violence, disasters and death.

Gum focuses on improving well-being for older adults and medical patients through applied research in behavioral health services and trauma-informed care in medical and aging service settings.

Corbin studies gerontology and social work and can discuss transitions common to aging, including how they may impact how older adults view and navigate the holiday season. She has helped develop the geriatric treatment program at HCA West Tampa Hospital, where she works PRN as a therapist. She has vocational experience within adolescent group homes, the Department of Children and Families and inpatient/outpatient mental health settings.

Coy's research focuses on relationships and partners’ behavior influence each other in romantic relationships. He also studies environmental behavior and person-pet interactions, and can discuss topics relating to dating and marriage.

Jackson's research focuses on sociocultural and historical anthropology; identity and representation; social construction of race, class, gender and ethnicity; heritage resource management; American, African American and African diaspora culture; ethnographic research methods; United States, and the Caribbean. She founded the The Living Heritage Institute in 2023 as a vehicle for expanding the scope of contemporary heritage work that has been conducted at the USF Heritage Research Lab since 2006.

Fox is a former FBI agent and Co-Director of the Center for Justice Research & Policy. Her research focuses on the identification of psychological and developmental risk factors for criminal behavior and prolific offending, experimental field research and evidence-based policing and crime prevention strategies.

Yacovazzi's research focuses on the intersection of women’s work, religion and consumerism.

Rogers' research focuses on the development of proficiency in second-language speech perception and production under a variety of listening and speaking conditions. She also collaborates with colleagues in Audiology on research examining speech perception by listeners with hearing impairment and/or cochlear implants.

Wilkins is an expert in community-engaged teaching through Florida history, museology, art and health. She is leading a project -- "Hurricane Histories" -- that captures the oral histories of hurricane survivors in her hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida.

Jaynes' research focuses on the role of employment and labor market perceptions in the decision to offend, factors that influence a hiring manager's decision to employ someone with a criminal record and the decision to accept a guilty plea by individuals charged with a crime.

Jones studies regional economics, tariffs and trade, housing and cost of living and financial consulting.

Wells is an environmental anthropologist with an interdisciplinary background in the social and natural sciences. His research emphasizes environmental pollution, brownfields challenges, land use legacies, sustainable and equitable development, water/wastewater management and science-policy interactions.

Ruva's research interests include psychology and law, with a focus on applying principles of memory, social perception and group decision-making to the area of jury decision-making.

Smith's research on occupational health psychology focuses on employees' health behaviors (e.g., sleep), relationships (e.g., workplace support, work-family), and long-term health (e.g., chronic conditions), including for high-risk populations. This work is pointed at the larger question: What are the biggest threats to modern workers aiming to live healthy, fulfilling, long lives, and how can we move toward effective solutions?

Walker-Egea's research and experience focus on data collection using quantitative and qualitative methods, data analysis and designing survey and research instruments. She is a registered dietitian and a licensed dietitian-nutritionist.

Diamond's research focuses on the physiology of behavior, the psychology of learning, the neurobiology of memory and the disturbance of the brain and behavior by stress. He is a leading expert on the cognitive and neurobiological reasons behind why normal, loving parents and caregivers unintentionally and unknowingly leave children unattended in cars.

Himmelgreen is an expert in biological and medical anthropology whose research focuses on food insecurity and hunger, maternal and child health, nutritional assessment, child growth and development, obesity and chronic disease, hypertension and HIV/AIDS prevention.

Verona is co-director of the Center for Justice Research and Policy at the University of South Florida, and and affiliate in USF's Department of Criminology. She studies personality disorders, externalizing and antisocial behaviors and self- and other-directed violence. Her recent research has focused on treatment implementation and prevention services adapted to field settings. Her lab applies science to understand individual and contextual routes to externalizing behaviors and criminal legal involvement and to uncover intersections between mental health and criminal justice system involvement.

Aranda is director of the Im/migrant Well-Being Research Center. Her research focuses on migrants' emotional well-being and how they adapt to challenges posed by legal status and adaptation in a new place.

Kimmerle is a forensic anthropologist whose research focuses on aging, growth and development as it is applied to facial recognition, human identification, demography and trauma analysis. She is executive director of the Florida Institute of Forensic Anthropology and Applied Science.

Burruss studies policing, homeland security and victimization in cyberspace. His research examines the structure and function of criminal justice agencies and the evolving landscape of cybercrime. He studies the causes and consequences of online offending and victimization, and how law enforcement and cybersecurity professionals respond to digital threats. He is affiliated with Cyber Florida, the state’s center for cybersecurity, and serves as a Faculty Fellow with both the Global and National Security Institute and Rapid7. He is the founding director of CIBR Lab — the Cybercrime Interdisciplinary Behavioral Research Laboratory — which trains students in research on cybercrime and cybersecurity.

Wilson's primary research interests include cochlear implants and diagnostics. She performs Auditory Processing Disorder testing, evaluations hearing for children and adults and works with hearing aids.

O'Leary is an anthropologist and scholar of the human dimensions of water. She leads CRESCENDO (Communicating Research Expansively through Sonification and Community-Engaged Neuroaesthetic Data-literacy Opportunities), an innovative interdisciplinary project that reimagines how environmental data is communicated. CRESCENDO translates complex data from critical issues like harmful algal blooms and red tide into immersive experiences that bridge the gap between scientific research and public understanding.

George is director of the Florida Center for Inclusive Communities. Her research focuses on positive behavior support, school-wide discipline, systems-level change, implementation and function-based behavior support planning and international applications of Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports.

Castaneda is an immigration expert whose research focuses on critical border studies, legal anthropology, medical anthropology, migration, migrant health, citizenship and the US/Mexico border.

Singh is an expert in anthropology and global health and a cultural studies scholar with expertise in fertility, reproduction and religion in India.

Dunn is a political scientist whose research focuses on law and justice in conflict-affected contexts, and the intersection of research methods and ethics. She can discuss the rule of law, post-conflict justice, women and conflict, legal consciousness and legal pluralism, especially in countries that have been affected by conflict or other forms of widespread violence.

Goldstein's research focuses on developing and evaluating interventions to teach functional social, language and literacy skills to individuals with a variety of disabilities.

Carrion's research focuses on end of life care, cancer and health decisions among the Latinos in the United States and indigenous communities in Northeast India.

Gray's research focuses on educational data analysis, psychometrics, and statistical modeling for early literacy, reading and math assessment and educational achievement.

Cavendish's research focuses on the intersection of religion, community and social change. He has examined the influence of Christian base communities on democratization in Latin America and the role of U.S. religious congregations in social action, anti-drug initiatives and the incorporation of new immigrant communities in American society.

Goldenberg's research focuses on psychological experiences associated with being a woman. To this end, she has conducted extensive research examining the causes and consequences of objectification of women. One approach to these questions is to apply terror management theory, which takes an existential perspective on human motivation.

Smart's research interests include speech perception, pediatric aural and language habilitation, phonology, vocabulary acquisition and Cued Speech.

Zarcone studies autism and developmental disabilities. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Child and Family Studies and Co-Director of the Florida Center for Inclusive Communities, a University Center of Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. Before USF, Zarcone held positions at the National Autism Center at the May Institute, Johns Hopkins University Medical School and the Kennedy Krieger Institute.

Galea's research focuses on increasing access to evidence-based mental health services globally.

Grosholz's research focuses on carceral studies, particularly in the areas of prison and reentry programming, recidivism and health, as well as on white extremism, specifically the white power music scene.

Heilman's research focuses on rehabilitation counseling and pediatric disabilities, psychosocial impact of disability, disability advocacy and disability awareness.

Reid is an expert in human trafficking, sexual violence and child maltreatment. She is director of the USF Human Trafficking Risk to Resilience Research Lab.

McBrien studies international migration and refugee resettlement, families affected by war and global refugee population growth -- which rose from 9.2 million in 2004 to 35.3 million in 2022.

Cochran's research interests include micro-social theories of criminal behavior, macro-social theories of crime and crime control, assessments of issues regarding the legitimacy of capital punishment and quantitative data collection and analysis.

Skvoretz's research focuses on social network analysis, social inequality, social mobility, status expectation states and participation in teams and small groups.

Arthur has worked in Ethiopia since 1995 conducting ceramic ethnoarchaeological and Holocene archaeological research. He was part of a NSF sponsored research project that discovered a human burial dating to 4,500 years ago and led to the extraction of ancient DNA, sequencing for the first time an African ancient genome. He is an expert in African archaeology, North American archaeology, Native Americans, ceramic technology and Indigenous knowledge of beer.

Douglas is an audiologist who can discuss tinnitus, misophonia management, hyperacusis, hearing loss, vestibular evaluations, hearing technology and pediatric audiology.

Walton is an expert in auditory physiology, aging and hearing loss and neural plasticity. His research focuses on identifying neurons within the auditory pathway specialized for extracting rapid acoustic events, elucidating age-related changes in neural processing of complex auditory signals presented in degraded acoustic environments and neural plasticity following exposure to an enriched auditory environment in a mouse model of congenital hearing loss.

Heide is an internationally recognized consultant on adolescent homicide, parricide and family violence. She has evaluated and consulted with attorneys regarding homicide offenders, specifically those who killed parents. As a licensed mental health counselor, she specializes in treating survivors of trauma, including police officers/first responders, adolescents and young adults, adult children of alcoholics and other high stress families, survivors of childhood abuse, sexual abuse and sexual assault.

Califf's research interests include early intervention, augmentative alternative communication, pediatric traumatic brain injury, autism spectrum disorder, gestalt language processing and complex language needs.

Arthur's research focuses on community archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, gender, stone tool technology and heritage studies in Africa. Since 1996, she has collaborated with Boreda-Gamo people living in southern Ethiopia to help document their sacred forested landscapes and technologies.

Gorajec's areas of clinical specialty include adult neurogenic communication disorders with a primary interest in traumatic brain injury, post-concussion and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s Disease and ALS.

Gabbidon's research interests include youth sexual health disparities, HIV stigma, health equity and intersectionality.

Rigg's research focuses on addiction and improving health outcomes for individuals with substance use disorders. He can discuss addiction training for behavioral healthcare providers, improving treatment outcomes for methadone patients and their families, preventing overdoses in Black and rural communities, the role of nutrition in addiction recovery and reducing stigma surrounding medications for opioid use disorder.

Johnson's research focuses on quality improvement and implementation science in behavioral health. Her research has also involved using technology to improve efficiency and effectiveness in patient care and to improve the adoption and utilization of evidence based treatments.

Jayaram's research focus includes migration/mobility, anthropology of Education, the Caribbean and the Americas and political economy. He has conducted fieldwork on Haitian educational and labor migrants to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and human rights for Haitian migrants.

Kosyluk's research focuses on understanding and addressing stigma among various populations, including people living with mental illness and addiction, and people living with HIV.

Yampolskaya's research focuses on child welfare, children's mental health, child maltreatment, advanced research methodology and innovative statistical methods.

Kern's research focuses on policy with educational practice, reduction of aggressive behaviors in schools and implementation of multi-tiered systems of support. She practiced law for over ten years before studying special education.

Rodríguez's research interests focus on education, program evaluation, improvement science and workforce development, with a particular emphasis on disability studies.

Baxley has experience as a crisis response therapist working with children and families in their homes who have faced allegations of abuse and neglect. She also has extensive experience working with the Veterans Health Administration as a marriage and family therapist.

Worthey's clinical work and research focus on rehabilitation counseling, youth with disabilities, animal-assisted interventions, disability advocacy and accommodations.

Callejas is an applied anthropologist with expertise in qualitative methodologies and community-engaged research. She can discuss behavioral health needs and program development, implementation and evaluation for children, youth, young adults and families who experience persistent disparities.

Peterson's primary research interest is long-term care policy and practice and communication concerning decision-making, disaster planning and advance care planning for older adults.

Hagen's research focuses on how to apply artificial intelligence and big data for social science research and government decision making. Current interests are in the domains of human-centered data science, social media, cybersecurity, public health crisis and undergraduate data science education.

Hall's research focuses on understanding how systems of power, oppression and trauma interact within the criminal justice system, and how these dynamics contribute to crime and societal harm. She is particularly focused on how trauma influences criminal behavior, how interactions with the criminal justice system affect justice-involved individuals and the ways police and correctional staff respond to trauma.

Boggess' research focuses on communities and crime, race and crime, housing and the geographic distribution of crime.

Young's research focuses on addiction, drug courts, homelessness and alternatives to incarceration for non-violent drug offenders.

Lawental's research focuses on substance use disorders, women's health, mental health and reproductive health.

Joshi's research focuses on violence against women and children. She is co-founder and director of the USF School of Social Work Interdisciplinary Lab, which offers interdisciplinary training to students in social work, public health, biomedical sciences, psychology and other fields. Her funded research has focused on topics including immigrant South Asian women survivors of intimate partner violence and mental health for pregnant Haitian teens.

Restrepo's research focuses on identifying the best language assessment and intervention practices for bilingual children at risk of academic difficulties.

Carlo's research focuses on bilingualism and literacy development in children, cross-language transfer of reading skills and educational interventions that support first- and second-language development.

Stern's research focuses on pediatric obesity, pediatric and adolescent cancer, chronic illness, transition to survivorship and communication between cancer patients and health care providers.

Santos' research focuses on crime trends in Latin America and Brazil, global homicide decline, and international criminal justice and crime policy and their effects. He is a frequent consultant for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, developing comparative data and analysis.

Foster's research focuses on achievement in children from historically marginalized backgrounds. He can discuss early learning, assessment and intervention, as well as how child, home and classroom factors influence STEM learning.

Snipes is an associate professor of instruction of economics in the Muma College of Business. He studies tourism and its effects on the economy and has conducted research on family dynamics and the links between macro-economic fluctuations and suicide. He can discuss general economics and policy, inflation, housing and cost of living.

Arnold's research focuses on hearing health policy and aging, hearing health care access and utilization and hearing loss and cognition. Her current NIH-funded projects include language accessibility of health education materials, Hispanic/LatinX hearing health and best practices hearing intervention as a possible factor to mediate the trajectory of dementia.

Kapolowicz is an expert in auditory neuroscience, speech perception, tinnitus and cochlear implants. She is principal investigator of USF's Speech Perception and Auditory Neuroscience Lab.

Park's research focuses on minority aging, Alzheimer's Disease, social isolation and mental health.

Mikkelson is an expert in speech language pathology in early intervention, routines-based intervention and caregiver coaching. She is the Language/Phonology Team Lead in the USF Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.

Atchley's research focuses on cognitive factors related to driving, including issues of vision and attention and their relationship to driving.

Miltenberger's research focuses on applied behavior analysis, behavioral skills training, child safety skills, health and fitness, sports performance, gun injury prevention, abduction prevention and poison prevention.

Dembo's research focuses on juvenile justice, youth drug use, delinquency, HIV/STD/STI issues, mental health issues and youth trauma.

Smith's research focuses on health economics with research interests in the role and impact of patient knowledge in health care markets, hospital quality and the economics of public health programs.

Weinberg's research focuses on positive psychology, couple and marital therapy, neurobiology, love and relationships, family dynamics and family therapy.

Boothroyd's research focuses on managed behavioral healthcare, survey research, welfare reform and research ethics.

Peters' research focuses on treatment of mental and substance use disorders among offenders, mental and substance abuse disorders, treatment alternatives to incarceration and drug court.

Joseph's primary interests are in research, evaluation and implementation of programs that benefit low-income, underserved children and families in high-needs communities. Her research focuses on the mental, educational and social development of children and youth.

Deryol is an expert in computer forensics whose research focuses on victimization, environmental criminology and crime prevention at both micro and macro levels.

Crawley's research focuses on gender and sexualities theories, queer and feminist theory, qualitative methods, social psychology and sociology of sport.

Stone's research interests include family violence, juvenile delinquency/juvenile justice, youth development, women and crime, human trafficking, public policy and program evaluation.

Solomon's research focuses on globalization, migration and international political economy, including related topics in Hong Kong and China.

Wagers is a former law enforcement officer and director of the BRIGHT (Bridging Information and Resource Gaps in Human Trafficking project through the USF Trafficking in Persons Lab. She can discuss human trafficking and domestic violence.

Fogel's research focuses on homelessness and vulnerable populations, poverty, social work education and capital punishment.

O's research focuses on victimology, school crime, crime prevention, crime hot spot forecasting and the relationship between land use and crime. She also can discuss cyber delinquency, and the links between marijuana dispensaries and adult crime and youth offending.

Marhefka research in the area of behavioral health science and practices focuses on HIV, behavioral interventions and implementation science.

Stark's research focuses on developing and applying psychometric methods to practical problems in industrial organizational and educational settings. he has worked with university faculty and practitioners to develop and improve tests measuring job performance, personality and cognitive ability.

Surrency's research focuses on interpretation theory, linguistics, cultural issues in interpretation, deaf and hard-of-hearing populations, legal interpretation and speech pathology.

Anand's research focuses on speech motor control, Parkinson's Disease, acoustic analysis of speech, perception of voice quality and voice.

Smith's research focuses on development, testing and implementation of innovative transition and employment service models and programs for people with complex disabilities.

Kulekevich studies Eastern Europe, Belarus, international political economics, migration and protest politics, democratization, international security and ethnic politics. Her research examines how opposition, identity, and institutions evolve under pressure and repression, including dynamics of authoritarian learning with extensions into international security, comparative politics and migration/diaspora politics.

Hasting's research interests include play therapy, transpersonal counseling, near death experiences, resiliency, trauma-informed care, animal-assisted therapy and school counseling.

Pluckhahn's research focuses on Eastern U.S. prehistory, Mesoamerican prehistory, cultural resource management, settlement pattern studies, household archaeology, environmental anthropology, ceramic analysis and GIS applications for anthropology.

Ojanen’s research focuses on forms and functions of aggression, school bullying and peer victimization, with additional expertise in parenting, prosocial development and social withdrawal. The goal of the work is understanding psychological predictors and social adjustment outcomes of specific forms of aggression, bullying and victimization (physical, verbal, relational and cyber bullying and victimization). Her related interests include social goals, self-esteem, narcissism, psychopathic traits and empathy, as well as rejection, acceptance and popularity/power among peers.

Jordan is the State Director of the Florida Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters Training and Technical Assistance Center at the USF. The Florida HIPPY T&TAC is responsible for the administration of all HIPPY sites across Florida, collectively serving more than 2,000 families each year. She is an expert in home-based early childhood intervention, child-parent interactions and school readiness.

Lynn is chair of the USF Face-to-Face Masters in Social Work program and co-editor of the Journal of HIV/AIDS and Social Services. Her research and teaching interests include simulation-based learning, technology in social work education, interprofessional training, integrated models of care, and HIV-related health and social services.

Buckles is director of the Addictions & Substance Abuse Counseling Graduate Certificate Program, which enables professionals in mental health, rehabilitation counseling, counselor education, social work, psychology, and other human service fields to enhance their knowledge and skills in marriage and family therapy. Her research focuses on life care plans for adopted children with disabilities, domestic violence and substance misuse.

Rote's research focuses on adolescent autonomy development, family decision-making, over-parenting, information management, inductive discipline and parental psychological control. As director of the Parent-Adolescent Relationships (PAR) Lab, she studies the impact of parenting on children and adolescents, with a focus on autonomy development, parental socialization and divergent perceptions of parenting.

Research focuses on the connections between educational experiences and career pathways and key life course transitions among students from various backgrounds. He specializes in research that challenges our understanding of interpersonal and structural influences on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and career pathways out of high schools, community colleges and four-year universities.

Haley's research focuses on stress, coping and adaptation in older adults and their family members and caregivers. More recently his focus has examined the impact of social isolation and loneliness as risk factors for poor mental and physical health, particularly after stressful events such as spousal bereavement and stroke.

Lee's current research examines place management theory, police effectiveness, spatio-temporal patterns of crime hot spots, crime hot spot forecasting, measures of crime concentration and machine learning models for recidivism forecasting. In 2017, he received a national award from the National Institute of Justice as winner of the Real-Time Crime Forecasting Challenge.