WHO WE ARE
Director
Dr. Fulford is Associate Professor of Rehabilitation Sciences, Occupational Therapy, and Psychological & Brain Sciences, and is affiliated with Mental Health Counseling & Behavioral Medicine, Behavioral Neuroscience, and the Graduate Program in Neuroscience at BU. He holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Miami and a BA in psychology from UCLA. Dr. Fulford joined BU following a career development award through the UCSF Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, where he focused on mental health informatics research. Currently, he and his team conduct studies to better understand dysregulated motivation and emotion in psychopathology, using smartphones as tools for experience sampling and behavioral sensing (i.e., continuous, unobtrusive measurement from smartphone sensors), and developing and testing digital interventions informed by these methods. A particular focus of this work is on the prediction and treatment of momentary states of social isolation and loneliness. Dr. Fulford is PI on grant-funded projects focused on human motivation and social dynamics using mobile assessment and intervention. He serves as grant reviewer at the NIH and NSF. Dr. Fulford is also a consulting editor for the Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) – Mental Health, American Psychologist, and Psychological Bulletin, and is Associate Editor for Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science and Journal of Mental Health. Outside of his academic identity, he enjoys ‘dadding’ and other occupations with high effort, high reward payouts.
Faculty
Dr. Mote is a Research Assistant Professor in Occupational Therapy at Boston University. She received her BA in Psychology from Oberlin College and her MA in Psychology and PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. Formerly an AMP Lab postdoctoral associate, she returned to the lab after being an Assistant Professor in Occupational Therapy and Psychology at Tufts University. She is interested in understanding the mechanisms of loneliness and the relationship between our emotions and social experiences, with a focus on understanding these processes in people with serious mental illness. She uses behavioral, qualitative, psychophysiological, and mobile methods to ask questions such as, “How is heart health related to loneliness in people with serious mental illness?”, “Are specific emotions related to better (or worse) social interactions?”, and “How can we address racial disparities in the assessment and treatment of people with mental health concerns?” She is an active member of the Society for Affective Science (SAS) and Society for Research in Psychopathology (SRP). She is a consulting editor for the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science and Emotion. She is also a practicing psychologist in MA. In her free time you might find her binge-watching movies and TV shows, baking, writing about mental health in pregnancy and parenthood, or chasing after her cat, dog, or children (possibly in that order).
Jakub Januška
Jakub Januška is a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in the lab and an Assistant Professor at the Psychiatric Clinic of the Slovak Medical University in Bratislava. He received his PhD in Clinical Psychology from Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. His current research interest is looking into everyday loneliness and social isolation in different social environments using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Besides that, he has been studying paranoia, social functioning, and negative affect in patients with severe psychiatric disorders and in healthy population, both from the perspective of stable processes as well as daily changes. He is particularly interested in different approaches towards multilevel data modeling, which he was exploring during his research internship at the Centre for Contextual Psychiatry, KU Leuven, Belgium. Besides working, Jakub enjoys staring at the sea, laughing with open-minded people, listening to timeless music, trying to produce timeless music, planning trips, and troubleshooting technical issues.
PhD Students
Arti Gandhi, BA, OTD
Curriculum Vitae
Curriculum Vitae
Arti is a third year PhD student in the Rehabilitation Sciences program, and a recent graduate of the Doctor of Occupational Therapy program at BU. She is interested in leveraging smartphone technology to enhance recovery related outcomes among people with psychosis. Specifically, she examines mechanisms of loneliness and social isolation, and the use of smartphones to assess and treat these challenges in real-time. In her spare time, she enjoys yoga, exercising/fitness, and finding as many green spaces throughout Boston as she can.
Renata Botello, MA
Curriculum Vitae
Curriculum Vitae
Renata is a fifth-year clinical psychology PhD student in the lab. She is passionate about understanding what predicts meaningful social interactions and loneliness in people with schizophrenia using experience sampling methods. Renata is also interested in how experiences of social adversity may be associated with difficulties in social effort and loneliness. Her previous research at the UC Davis Early Psychosis Program focused on the intersection of psychosis and trauma experiences. During her B.A. at UC Berkeley, she acquired research experience on emotion dysregulation and emotional expressivity in people with schizophrenia. Renata is also a practicum student at the Psychosis Division at McLean Hospital where she provides group and individual therapy for individuals with psychosis. Prior to the Psychosis Division, she was a practicum student at McLean’s Behavioral Health Partial Hospital Program and The Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. Renata enjoys running, comedy, and sourdough baking.
Joseph Maimone, MA
Curriculum Vitae
Curriculum Vitae
Joe is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Clinical Psychology program at BU. His research interests involve using ecologically valid, real-time data collection methods to understand individual patterns of social functioning and psychopathology among patients with serious mental illness. Over the course of his Ph.D. studies, he hopes to study formal modeling techniques that may allow for accelerated testing and tuning of theories of social functioning and its impact on rapid increases or decreases in psychiatric symptoms. Previously, Joe was a research assistant at the Nock Lab at Harvard University and a senior clinical research coordinator at Massachusetts General Hospital where he led recruitment for two real-time studies of suicidal thoughts and behaviors among psychiatric inpatients. In his free time, Joe enjoys boardgames, snowboarding, and cuddles with his corgi named Cooper.
Gili Grunfeld
Curriculum Vitae
Curriculum Vitae
Gili is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Clinical Psychology program at BU. She is interested in the phenomenology of psychosis, especially the context of delusions. Gili hopes to investigate the ways in which loneliness interacts with the onset, course, and subjective experience of psychosis. Her prior research at the Prevention and Early Intervention Program for Psychosis-Montréal (PEPP-Montréal) and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute focused on the thematic content of delusions in the first-episode population. She has an MSc from the Transcultural Psychiatry Division of McGill University and is passionate about interdisciplinary research in psychopathology. Gili enjoys being outside, reading and music.
Research Staff
Robert Sawdey, BS
Robert is a Research Coordinator in the lab. He graduated with a degree in psychology and worked in three social psychology research labs during his time at Tufts University. After graduation, he worked as a Mental Health Specialist in McLean Hospital’s Dissociative Disorders & Trauma Inpatient Unit. He is interested in the social factors that contribute to serious mental illness, as well as how digital interventions can be used to decrease loneliness and isolation in people with SMI. In the future, he hopes to research ways to mitigate social disparities in mental health outcomes among marginalized groups. Robert enjoys listening to music, going on walks, hiking, buying new plants, and playing speed chess in Harvard Square.
Undergraduate Research Assistants
Maham Siddiqui
Isabel Sachs
Theresa Majewski