Research Opportunities

Autism Spectrum Disorder is often perceived as a childhood disorder. However, most autistic individuals experience challenges in adult life and maintaining engagement in their communities across multiple domains, including navigating postsecondary education, obtaining and sustaining employment, engaging in desired relationships and accessing services to help them achieve positive quality of life. On the other hand, autistic adults exhibit a range of strengths and positive attributes. Unfortunately, research on autism in adulthood is limited across the board, with very few studies focusing on strengths.

Dr. Bates is Distinguished Research Professor and associate director of the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies (CAS). She directs the Research Division and the Cardiac Neuroscience Laboratory at CAS. The mission of this multidisciplinary lab is to conduct integrated physiology, psychology and neuroscience research aimed at understanding alcohol and other drug effects on behavioral flexibility, and developing innovative bio-behavioral treatment approaches for persons with alcohol and drug use disorders. The lab is especially interested in learning how visceral bodily reactions are integrated with cognitive and emotional regulation through the baroreflex feedback loop.

Youth Anxiety and Depression Clinic Learn what makes psychological therapy work! We are conducting a randomized clinical trial comparing three cognitive behavioral interventions for children and adolescents with anxiety and depression. We are looking for undergraduate research assistants (RAs) to provide research support and complete independent research projects in our lab. You will learn about treatment outcomes (which treatments are best), how they work (mediators and moderators of treatment), and how to increase access to underserved populations. RAs become familiar with daily operations of multiple large research projects and how to carry out large clinical studies. RA will conduct behavioral assessments with youth and caregivers. RAs will have opportunities to write comprehensive literature reviews and complete independent research projects. For more information and to apply, please visit our lab website at https://gsapp.rutgers.edu/centers-clinical-services/YADC Email Dr. Brian Chu

My students and I conduct research on social and psychological factors involved in the development and course of physical and mental health problems. With regard to physical health, our primary focus is heart disease, a leading killer. With regard to mental health, our primary focus is anxiety/anxiety disorders, a highly prevalent set of conditions. 

Chronic disease and health-risk behaviors are often comorbid with psychological disorders that maintain those conditions. In my lab, we conduct research on the effects of anxiety and stress on health and behaviors across multiple domains including women’s health, cigarette smoking, and physical activity. Our aim is contribution to a better understanding of the influence of psychological components on physical health in order to improve treatment outcomes for clinical populations as well as community wellbeing. Students interested in gaining research experience are encouraged to apply via the application on the lab webpage.

Behavioral and educational research conducted with children and adults with autism. Areas of research include evaluating the effectiveness of treatment procedures, assessing family functioning, and influencing social behavior in autism.

Human cognition is best understood in terms of a set of inter-connected functional neural systems. There is a huge need for functional schematics and functional anatomical maps of these systems and I have taken up this challenge. Anyone who likes to draw and is interested in neuroscience will find this work very rewarding.

Currently, this lab is not accepting any undergraduate students. Adolescence is a period of increased risk for suicidal thoughts, behaviors, and death by suicide. Our research group examines individual and systemic factors that increase suicide risk during this developmental period, particularly focused on the role of social media and sleep. To better assess these factors as they unfold in real time and in the real world, our research uses self-report surveys, qualitative interviews, clinical interviews, and monitoring methods that are active (e.g., asking questions several times per day) and passive (capturing sleep and smartphone activity). Students should be willing and able to work in the lab for at least two semesters (or a semester and a summer). There is an online application available about our research and the position on the lab website.

We are currently inviting interested and enthusiastic individuals to apply to be research assistants in the Racism, Identity, Coping, and Health (RICH) Lab under the direction of Dr. Lori Hoggard, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology (Social area). We seek to understand the physical and mental health consequences of racism and discrimination encountered by African Americans and members of other racial/ethnic minority groups. In doing so, we focus on identity, coping, and important mechanisms that underlie the associations between racism and health. The lab employs diverse approaches, including surveys, experiments, and psychophysiological (e.g., heart rate, heart rate variability, blood pressure) methods.

The Quad Lab is part of the Department of Psychology and Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science. Our lab studies how people think about quantitative information and how our strategies changes across development and across contexts. We do online and in person experiments with infants, children, and adults. Currently, most of our work is in the domain of mathematical and numerical cognition. Specifically, proportional reasoning provides an interesting and important case study because it often causes difficulty in older children and adults, and yet infants and young children have good intuitions about how to use proportional information. What do these early intuitions look like? When and why do older children and adults make errors? What cognitive processes are people using to reason about proportion, and how do they change across development? What experiences cause people to use incorrect or suboptimal processing strategies? These are the kinds of questions we address in my lab, with the goal of building more complete cognitive theories of how the human mind works and to develop better ways of teaching and learning difficult mathematical concepts. In my lab, we believe in the importance of fostering an inclusive and supportive environment, and actively work to create such an environment. We also believe in the principles of open and transparent science, and do our science with that in mind, including pre-registration, open materials, open data, and so on. Undergraduate students interested in getting involved in the lab can email our general lab email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Current projects on which undergraduates could assist include:

Much of the research on suicide has measured suicidal ideation and its risk factors with long periods of time (e.g., years, months) between measurements.Our research group uses wearable physiological monitors and smartphone-based real-time monitoring technology (i.e. Ecological Momentary Assessment) to explore the day to day or hour to hour variation in suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Through the use of these new methods and technologies we are able to assess the contextual factors associated with suicide risk and resilience as they actually occur. Students interested in joining my lab can complete the online application found on lab’s website.

The nervous and immune systems share a mutually interactive relationship, which promotes various forms of physiological and behavioral adaptations in the face of pathogenic challenges from viruses and bacteria. The focus of my lab is on understanding this relationship through (I) studies that determine the mechanisms by which stress affects immune function, and (ii) studies that examine the cognitive and emotional consequences of immune system activation. These studies involve animal models of immunological activation and/or stressor exposure. Interested students should therefore be prepared to learn and conduct research that involves sterotaxic surgery, behavioral testing, and collection and processing of brain and lymphoid tissue for histological and biological assessment. This would be appropriate for students wishing to progress towards graduate education in Biopsychology/Behavioral Neuroscience, as well as in areas of Health Psychology that focus on Psychoneuroimmunology.

In the Affective and Biological Underpinnings of Anxiety and Substance Abuse (ABUSA) lab we seek to identify underlying vulnerabilities that place individuals at risk for co-occurring anxiety pathology and substance use disorders, and/or may serve to maintain associated dysfunction.

I use the rodent olfactory (smell) system to study how the brain processes sensory stimuli. I am especially interested in how the brain changes based on an animal's environment and prior experience. In my lab we use a wide variety of techniques, including behavioral experimentation, optical imaging of neural activity under a microscope, and tissue assays for various proteins and neurotransmitters. Students who wish to work in my lab should have taken Physiological Psychology or an equivalent undergraduate neuroscience course and should submit a resume and transcript. Please see my website for more information.

Based on our needs, we offer opportunities for undergraduate students to join our lab and participate in the research we conduct. We are looking for highly motivated individuals with strong organizational and interpersonal skills willing to commit for at least two consecutive semesters.

(Sponsor- Maurice Elias) The Rutgers – Data-Driven Instructional Coaching Model (RU-DDICM) is a model demonstration project designed to implement a technology assisted data-driven coaching model to enhance teachers’ reading intervention practices and improve student outcomes for K-3 students with or at-risk for reading disabilities. Students experiencing early reading performance deficits have lower school performance throughout middle and high school and are at an elevated risk for school dropout (i.e., 2.5 times more likely to drop out), which has devastating effects on future adult employment and wellness. DDICM aims to build local school-based coaches capacity to support reading interventionists and classroom teachers with knowledge and skills in research-based data-driven reading interventions, ultimately leading to improvements in K-3 students’ early reading performance. The effectiveness of DDICM will be evaluated based on a multi-method and multi-data source process during the fall, winter, and spring over the course of four years, from Fall 2021 through Spring 2025. Data will be collected on students’ reading performance and outcomes through a standardized reading assessment battery, the Woodcock Johnson IV Achievement Test (WJIV), along with universal screening, and district specific reading assessments. Data will also be collected on data-driven reading intervention practices using knowledge and perception surveys and online logging, as well as data on coaching sessions through qualitative coding of audio recordings. This is a tremendous opportunity for students to obtain experience interacting with elementary grade students and conducting a standardized reading assessment, as well as gaining new skills in conducting meaningful school-based educational and psychological research. The project is interested in recruiting highly motivated undergraduate research assistants to play a vital role in collecting students reading performance data. This will be an outstanding opportunity for students who are interested in early reading assessment and intervention research focused on improving teachers’ and reading interventionists’ evidence-based practices for students with or at risk for early reading difficulties.   Objectives Undergraduate research assistants working on this project will:  Participate in multi-site research in public elementary schools throughout New Jersey Receive training on administering and scoring the Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Achievement  Conduct WJIV reading performance assessments for 200 students in grades K-3 across 9 schools  Receive training on qualitative coding audio sessions for the fidelity of coaching protocols  Design, administer, and monitor online survey and data collection forms in Qualtrics  Assist in the processing of research data, including data entry, quality control, and analytics for student performance data, student behavior rating scales, surveys, and coaching integrity data Interact and engage with school-based personnel to coordinate data collection activities   Requirements A 2-semester commitment for the Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 semesters. A minimum of 9 hours per week between the hours of 8:30 am and 3 pm. Personal transportation (such as a car) is required to visit elementary schools   Application Students interested in applying to participate in the Rutgers DDICM program should send an email and a current résumé to project manager Ms. Gina Mazzariello. Gina Mazzariello Project Manager This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Telephone: 831-331-5269

Lab Name: Dialectical Behavior Therapy Clinic at Rutgers University (DBT-RU)   Principal Investigator: Shireen L. Rizvi, PhD, ABPP   Website: dbt.rutgers.edu   The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Clinic at Rutgers University (DBT-RU) is a research and training clinic that provides comprehensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) services to individuals in the community. DBT-RU is a research lab dedicated to improving psychological treatment for adults and teens with borderline personality disorder, suicidal behavior, and problems stemming from difficulties regulating emotions (for more information, see dbt.rutgers.edu and Youtube.com/dbtru). Students who join our lab learn about psychosocial clinical trials research, including data entry, management, and tracking of research files, as well as participate in weekly lab meetings and journal club, with readings on a variety of topics (e.g., DBT, emotion dysregulation, and BPD). For the 2022-2023 year, interested students can email Hannah Krall for more information: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Based on our needs, we may have some opportunities for undergraduate students to join the lab and participate in our research program. We are looking for highly motivated individuals with strong organizational and interpersonal skills that are willing to commit for at least two consecutive semesters. 

The Emotion and Psychopathology Lab is currently recruiting undergraduate research assistants. The EmP Lab, led by Professor Edward Selby, Ph.D., examines how difficulties regulating emotion contribute to psychological disorders such as eating disorders, self-harming behavior, and Borderline Personality Disorder. Current studies underway in the lab include an investigation of the impact of stress on eating behavior, as well a project testing the influence of food on emotion and cognitive task performance. Upcoming studies in the lab will examine differences in emotional reactivity between individuals with Bulimia Nervosa, Major Depression, and Borderline Personality Disorder.

The way the world looks to us is a remarkable achievement of our visual system. The visual inputs we receive are just the two-dimensional images projected on our retinas. But from these our brain is able to construct representations of three-dimensional objects and surfaces laid out in space. Research in our lab is aimed at understanding how the human brain computes representations of objects and surfaces from the retinal images, and how it uses these representations for various tasks.

The research in this lab investigates the cognitive and neural bases of language. Ongoing projects fall in five general areas.

Research interests: My research is conducted in the NeuroPharmacoGenetics Lab at the Center of Alcohol Studies. My research interests are generally related to animal learning models of alcohol drinking; Pavlovian conditioning of sign-tracking; intergender effects on alcohol drinking; gene expression correlates of alcohol drinking in mice.

Songbirds use their songs and calls to communicate in social and reproductive contexts. They learn to make these sounds through a process of vocal imitation that has much in common with human speech acquisition. Very few animals are capable of this form of behavioral learning. It involves auditory discrimination, auditory memory and sensorimotor learning. We can study the brain mechanisms of each of these processes, because the relevant brain pathways have been identified in songbirds. Experiments in the laboratory involve a range of techniques from behavioral observations and sound processing to neurophysiology and neuroanatomy. Opportunities exist for interested students to participate in ongoing projects if they can make a significant time commitment.

In my laboratory we study neural mechanisms of cocaine and opiate addiction, binge eating, reward, and motor skill learning in the mesolimbic and nigrostriatal dopamine systems in rat models of behaviors involving dopamine transmission. We analyze behavioral measures and activity of single neurons in conjunction with the animal's affective state measured via ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) that rats emit. One USV frequency range signals positive affect, whereas another signals negative affect. USVs provide new insights into what rats are experiencing, sometimes surprisingly at odds with what experimenters presume.

Our research examines such traditional topics as self-concept and self-esteem and their relation to questions in contemporary studies of social cognition. We are interested in how knowledge about the self is represented cognitively and how such knowledge structures are configured. We are also interested in the relationship of self-understanding and self-evaluation to areas in clinical psychology. Most specifically we are studying the connection of cognition about the self with depression and the personality disorders.