Current Members

Principal Investigator
dsaxbe@usc.edu

I first developed a love of academia as a kid growing up in the small town of Oberlin, Ohio, where I spent most of high school attempting to impersonate an Oberlin College student. I went east for college at Yale University, where I double-majored in English and Psychology and tried to impersonate a graduate student, and then west for graduate school at UCLA, where I tried to impersonate a professor. Now I am a professor and I try to impersonate a retired person. As a graduate student, I explored how everyday marital functioning shaped couples’ cortisol patterns at the Center for the Everyday Lives of Families. Post-Ph.D, I completed my clinical internship at a veteran’s hospital in LA, and then received an NRSA F32 fellowship from NIH to work with Gayla Margolin on the USC Family Studies Project. I then launched the HATCH study, which follows couples from pregnancy to postpartum and measures their hormonal and neural responses to parenthood. We are collecting seven-year follow-up data now as our kids reach grade school age. My work is unified by an interest in how relationship contexts influence health, especially during critical life junctures like the transition through puberty and the transition into parenthood. In a former life, I was an aficionado of the local indie rock scene in LA. Now my most adventurous hobby is reading, and I can usually be found at home with my two teenagers and my husband Dan, a music producer.

Lab Manager
vavala@usc.edu

Gabriella joined the NEST Lab as a lab manager in the summer of 2024. Prior to joining the lab, she earned her B.A. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and her Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Broadly, Gabriella is interested in how early life stress and resilience factors interact to affect a person’s long-term health and well-being.

Lab Manager
ekim7033@usc.edu

Lizzy Kim joined NESTLab in Spring 2023. She received her B.A. in Psychology at USC with a minor in Health and Nutrition. Her research interests revolve around exploring family dynamics by closely examining interpersonal relationships between couples or between a parent and child.

Postdoctoral Researcher
grinne@usc.edu

Gabrielle is a postdoctoral researcher in the NEST Lab. Her research examines the biopsychosocial processes that shape child health and development. Specifically, her work focuses on how aspects of the prenatal and postnatal family environment, across biological, psychological, and social levels of analysis (e.g., prenatal stress, gestational biology, parent mental health, caregiving behaviors), influence child biological and behavioral development. She received her PhD in Psychology from UCLA, working with Dr. Christine Dunkel Schetter and Dr. Steve Lee, and BS in Psychology and History from Yale University. You can read more about her research at gabriellerinne.com.

Graduate Student
sicarden@usc.edu

Sofi is a second-year graduate student in the USC Clinical Science program. Her current research interests include (1) how early-life risk and resilience factors impact perinatal development and (2) exploring the neuroendocrine markers that predict sensitive parenting behaviors during the postpartum period. She received a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2016. After graduating, Sofi spent two years working as an IRTA fellow in Dr. Ellen Leibenluft’s group at the National Institutes of Mental Health, studying the developmental trajectory and treatment of childhood irritability.

Graduate Student
eaviv@usc.edu

Lizzie started the Clinical Science doctoral program at USC in 2020. Her current research interests include how the transition to parenthood affects couples’ relationship dynamics, both behaviorally and physiologically. Her interests stem from her prior research experiences studying the transition to motherhood through a developmental lens with Dr. Aurelie Athan at Columbia University, as well as studying the relationship between parenting dynamics and toxic stress in infancy with Dr. Miguelina German at Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx.

Graduate Student
gleon@usc.edu

Gabe is a fifth-year PhD student in Clinical Science at USC (started Fall 2021). Broadly, he studies interpersonal dynamics within families and close relationships – with a specific focus on stress. Namely, he is interested in 1) how close relationships within the family system serve to regulate stress and scaffold child development, and 2) how relationships themselves may deteriorate because of chronic stress exposure and trauma. He hopes to conduct research that informs personalized, family-focused interventions for marginalized communities suffering from trauma and chronic stress. You can read more about his work at https://gabrielleon.me/

Graduate Student
waizman@usc.edu

Yael Waizman is a fifth-year Clinical Science Ph.D. student at USC. Her research focuses on understanding the neural and behavioral changes that occur during the transition to parenthood, with a particular emphasis on how these changes influence mental health and couple relationship satisfaction. She is interested in how the brain and body adapt to the demands of parenthood, as well as how stress and family environments impact socioemotional development. Prior to joining the NeuroEndocrinology of Social Ties Lab, she worked as a lab manager in Dr. Jennifer Silvers’ lab at UCLA, researching how early caregiving adversity, environmental instability, and transitional milestones impact emotion regulation and well-being across development.

Graduate Student
pnewsome@usc.edu

Phil is a third-year Clinical Science PhD student studying how the brain adapts to support social and emotional demands during major developmental periods, like childhood/adolescence and new parenthood. He uses cognitive neuroscience (e.g., fMRI) and computational approaches to uncover relationships between brain function and individual differences in emotion processing, decision-making, and social development. He is also curious about mental health challenges accompanying these life transitions. Prior to joining the NEST Lab, Phil spent two postbaccalaureate years with Dr. Daniel Pine at the National Institute of Mental Health studying threat learning and decision conflict in pediatric anxiety.

Leo is a first-year PhD student in the Clinical Science Program at USC. His current research interests include the etiology and treatment of depression, anxiety, and irritability in adolescents with an emphasis on understanding the impact of parenting strategies and parent-dyad dynamics — like parental control and marital satisfaction — on these mechanisms. He is also interested in the division of labor amongst parents and how this may affect the family unit. Leo received his BA in Psychology and Sociology from Loyola Marymount University and spent two years as a research coordinator at the UCLA Center for Autism Research and Treatment after graduating.

Research Assistant

Olivia is a second-year Psychology major with a minor in Business Finance. Her research interests include family dynamics and mental health, particularly on the intersection of substance use disorders within families and childhood development. After completing undergraduate degree, she plans to attend medical school and pursue child and adolescent psychiatry.

Research Assistant

Olivia Gorum is a junior at the University of Southern California, double majoring in Health and Human Sciences and Spanish. Her research interests include early childhood development, parent-child relationships, and the biological and psychological factors that shape family dynamics during early life transitions.

Research Assistant

Olivia Dien is a third-year psychology undergraduate student with a minor in Fashion at USC. Her research interests include exploring interpersonal dynamics between couples and external factors that may affect conflict approach such as culture, attachment style, and gender.

Research Assistant

Evan Lu is a second-year psychology undergraduate student at USC. His research interests include interpersonal relationships, human development, and behavior.

Research Assistant

Tim is a fourth-year neuroscience major with a minor in dance. His research interests include investigating mental health during the transition to parenthood and its related neural correlates. After graduating, he plans on pursuing the physician-scientist pathway.