Team

Jonathan P. Stange, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Principal Investigator, Cognition and Affect Regulation (CAR) Lab
Department of Psychology
University of Southern California

Dr. Stange’s research focuses on identifying mechanisms and outcomes of inflexible cognitive and affective processes in mood disorders. His current work seeks to identify how interactions between cognitive and affective processes underlies maladaptive affect regulation and risk for problems such as depression and suicide. This work involves the use of neuroimaging, autonomic psychophysiology, and experimental, behavioral, and longitudinal methods. Dr. Stange has particularly focused on measuring affect regulation outside of the lab in “real-world” contexts using ambulatory assessment techniques (e.g., wearables to measure autonomic psychophysiology and behavior with ecological momentary assessment). These methods may have greater ecological validity than traditional laboratory-based methods and can elucidate dynamic processes that occur within individuals over time. By improving our understanding of how risk factors vary between individuals, and within individuals across contexts, Dr. Stange’s goal is to inform real-time, person-centered metrics for detecting moments of risk and for intervening to reduce risk and improve affect regulation.

Ellie Xu

Graduate Student

Ellie Xu has been a Ph.D. student in the CAR Lab since 2021. Ellie received her Bachelor’s in Psychology and Economics from the University of Chicago, and then completed a post-baccalaureate fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health where she studied mechanisms of pediatric irritability. In the CAR Lab, Ellie is interested in determining mechanisms contributing to risk for depression, to inform precise treatment targets for intervention. Ellie is particularly interested in investigating how difficulties with emotion regulation play a role in depression, with a focus on emotion regulation flexibility.

Jiani (Janet) Li

Graduate Student

All of us experience negative emotions at some point in our life, yet some of us seem to cope with them better. How so, and why? Furthermore, how do such individual differences manifest through various channels of emotion — physiological, neural, behavioral, experiential, and expressive? Finally, can we tailor the type and timing of treatments to one’s idiosyncrasies in emotion regulation? In the CAR Lab, Jiani (Janet) is excited to tackle these questions by examining emotion regulation in naturalistic settings at multiple levels of analysis. In doing so, she hopes to parse individual variations in how we experience and respond to negative emotions — processes strongly tied to symptoms of mood disorders — and to inform individualized treatments accordingly.

Sarah Zapetis

Graduate Student

Sarah is a first-year graduate student in the CAR lab interested in examining the biobehavioral mechanisms of cognitive inflexibility and maladaptive affect regulation in mood disorders. She is eager to integrate neuroimaging methods with ambulatory autonomic psychophysiology and ecological momentary assessment techniques to investigate how inflexible cognitive and biological processes contribute to affective dysregulation and the development and persistence of mood disorders.

Sean Minns

Graduate Student

Resilience is often thought of as a trait that is woven into our biology. But what if our emotion regulation and problem-solving capacity are more fluid? As a second-year student at the CAR lab, Sean is excited to investigate how fluctuations in cognitive resources shape the emotion regulation strategies people can access at the moment and how the environment, in turn, influences cognitive function. He’s eager to examine how factors like noise, pollution, and weather shape the brain’s ability to engage in effortful regulation. Rather than relying on static idiographic approaches, he is interested in methods that adapt to the moment, environment, and broader context—reconceptualizing disorders as complex patterns that can be interrupted through adaptive interventions. Sean is assisting on a project combining fMRI, smartphone-based phenotyping, and ambulatory physiology to explore dynamic cognitive affective trajectories. Hobbies: ranking LA’s tacos (1st place Villa’s Tacos).

Margarid Turnamian

Graduate Student

Margarid (she/her) is a first year graduate student interested in understanding how emotional dysregulation may lead to more persistent depression by evaluating the relationship between daily fluctuations in depressive symptoms, physiological arousal and emotional regulation processes. She is particularly eager to utilize ecologically valid assessments to investigate these relationships. Margarid is also passionate about working with marginalized communities and hopes her work can provide insight into existing mental health disparities and influence positive change in local communities.

Desiree Webb

Research Coordinator

Desiree Webb joined the CAR Lab as a Research Coordinator in July 2024. She earned her B.A. in Psychology and Economics from Barnard College in 2022 before working as a clinical research coordinator at Mount Sinai’s Eating and Weight Disorders Program, where she developed an interest in emotion regulation and cognitive flexibility as transdiagnostic mechanisms in psychopathology.
At the CAR Lab, Desiree coordinates the RAPID and PARCS studies. Her research interests focus on how maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, particularly rumination, contribute to the maintenance of internalizing disorders. She is also interested in leveraging physiological data to enhance objective assessments of psychological functioning.
Desiree’s research experiences have solidified her commitment to pursuing a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. While at USC, she aims to deepen her expertise in cognition and affect regulation, contributing to research that informs personalized, real-time interventions. Ultimately, she hopes to apply this knowledge to the development and testing of novel, accessible, evidence-based treatments for mental illness.

Archita Tharanipathy

Research Coordinator

Archita is a Research Coordinator at the CAR Lab, overseeing the RAPID and PARCS studies. She earned her B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with a minor in Applied Psychology from UCSB in 2022.At UCSB, Archita researched white matter tracts in spatial navigation, contributed to bionic eye development, and mentored neurodivergent students. She later worked at Stanford University in the CoPsyN Sleep Lab and the BRAVE Lab, where she helped identify neuroimaging biomarkers related to sleep and addiction to improve treatment outcomes.Archita’s research interests lie in understanding how cognitive and social processes interact at the neural level, and she plans to pursue a Ph.D. to explore these areas through neuroscience and neuroimaging techniques.