Director

Erika Lunkenheimer, Ph.D.

Dr. Lunkenheimer is a Professor of Developmental Psychology, Coordinator of the Developmental Psychology area, and a faculty affiliate of the Child Study Center at Penn State. She is also an Associate Director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network, housed in the Social Science Research Institute at Penn State, and an Associate Editor of the journal Developmental Psychology. She has received funding for her work from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), including K01 and R01 grants from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Her research has been published in many scientific journals, including Developmental Psychology, Development and Psychopathology, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Developmental Psychobiology, and the Journal of Family Psychology.

Dr. Lunkenheimer’s research program revolves around risk and protective processes in the parent-child relationship, with special attention to the role of physiological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral regulatory processes in the parent, child, and parent-child dyad. Her work involves the dual goals of (1) understanding how mother-child and father-child interaction and regulatory patterns contribute to developmental psychopathology and (2) uncovering malleable interaction and regulatory processes that could aid in the tailoring and improvement of preventive intervention programs for families at risk. 

Grounded in dynamic systems theory and using innovative dynamic time series statistical approaches, Dr. Lunkenheimer studies the moment-to-moment coordination of emotions, goal-oriented behaviors, and physiology between parents and young children in relation to familial risk factors and child outcomes. A primary interest is examining the role that these parent-child coregulation patterns play in the development of child maltreatment, and their association with related maltreatment risk factors. Ultimately, this work achieves a better understanding of regulatory processes between parents and children to maximize their use in improving parent-child interaction patterns in family-based interventions and preventing child maltreatment.

Post-Doctoral Scholars

Savannah Girod

Savannah is a postdoctoral research fellow working with Dr. Erika Lunkenheimer. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and received her B.S. in Psychology from Stevenson University. Savannah’s research is focused on identifying multilevel (e.g., cognitive, psychological, physiological, and contextual) predictors of parenting behavior and understanding the processes by which parenting shapes children’s socioemotional outcomes. Her work with Dr. Lunkenheimer is focused on understanding how parent-child dyadic processes are influenced by parent characteristics and the context in which parenting is assessed. 

Graduate Students

Kivilcim Degirmencioglu, M.S.

Kivilcim is a 4th-year student in the Developmental Psychology program at Penn State. She began her graduate studies in 2021 after earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. For her master’s thesis, she explored the associations between toddlers’ noncompliance and emotional reactivity with maternal control and warmth. Primarily working with Dr. Erika Lunkenheimer, with Dr. Koraly Pérez-Edgar as her secondary advisor, Kıvılcım’s research investigates parent-child interactions, focusing on how dyadic states like mutual affect and contingent behaviors relate to parent-related risks and child behavioral problems. She is particularly interested in how dyadic parent-child interactions dynamically organize over time in conjunction with changes in physiological functioning, such as heart rate variability, in both parents and children.

Jianing Sun, M.S.

Jianing is a second-year doctoral student in the Developmental Psychology program working with Dr. Erika Lunkenheimer and Dr. Kristin Buss. She received her master’s degree in psychology from Beijing Normal University, China in 2022. Her research interests are the impact of family risks (e.g., child maltreatment) on child outcomes, physiological pathways between childhood adversity and health, and individual differences in above associations. In pursuing her Ph.D., she hopes to further investigate how familial adversities and parent-child dynamics contribute to child physiology and psychopathology, and the protective processes in parent-child relationships. 

Sohee Park, M.A. 

Sohee is a first-year doctoral student in the Developmental Psychology program working with Dr. Erika Lunkenheimer. Sohee received her B.A. in Psychology and M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea. Her research topic is exploring risk and protective factors among children at risk, especially child maltreatment, and identifying intervention target within the parent-child dynamics. In her free time, Sohee enjoys hiking, weightlifting, cooking, and watching Harry Potter.  

Project Coordinators

Audrey Middaugh

Audrey is the project coordinator for the PRESH project. Audrey earned her B.S. in Psychology from Purdue University in 2024 before beginning her role as the PRESH Project Coordinator at Penn State. Her research interests include parental racial-ethnic socialization, Asian American mental health, and transracial adoptees. 

Project Staff

Isabelle Mitchell

Kayleen Montanez

Alexa Nordine

Check back soon to see what Alexa’s up to!

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Julianna Keller

Julianna is a senior majoring in Biology with a minor in Psychology. In the lab, Julianna is a research assistant on the data collection team and focuses on the kids during sessions! She plans on attending medical school to become a developmental-behavioral pediatrician. She is very interested in how early childhood experiences impact future development. In her free time, Julianna likes to volunteer with LifeLink, paint, and spend time with her family and friends.

Bianca Silva

Bianca Silva is a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Psychology and English, with a minor in Human Development & Family Studies. She works in the PRESH lab on the data collection team, as Experimenter 2, and on the physiological team doing impedance coding. She plans to go to graduate school and get her PhD in Clinical Psychology, going on to become a practicing psychologist with a specialty in art therapy. Her interests lie in social, personality, and abnormal psychology and understanding why people behave in the ways that they do. In her free time, she enjoys reading, writing, drawing, yoga, and doing anything with friends.

Liza Yeaney

Jui Baliga

Jui Baliga is a junior majoring in Psychology and minoring in Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) at the Schreyer Honors College. She is involved in video coding of behavior and data collection at the lab. Her research interests include studying the specific behavioral interactions between parent and child, as well as the differences in behavior between primary and secondary caregivers. After completing her bachelor’s, Jui plans to pursue a PhD in clinical-developmental psychology. She is also the President of the Lift the Mask club on campus, which helps raise mental health awareness. In her free time, Jui enjoys reading fiction novels and painting.  

Bineta Brooks

Bineta is a fourth-year student majoring in Psychology with a minor in Disability Studies. She is a part of the PRESH Project as an Experimenter 2 on the data collection team. Bineta plan to pursue a PhD in Health Psychology to become a pediatric health psychologist. Her interests lie in mental health, child development, and understanding the importance of health, well-being, and psychology. On campus, she is the president and co-founder of an organization called The BEAT, which provides support, resources, and a safe space for Black students’ mental health. In her free time, Bineta enjoys reading, cooking, and spending time with loved ones.

Marina Liddic

Marina is a junior double majoring in Psychology and Anthropological science. In the PRESH lab, Marina is a research assistant on the data collection team that focuses on the children during sessions. She plans on pursuing graduate school to earn a Psy.D. in Clinical-Forensic Psychology. Her interests lie in becoming a forensic psychologist and hopes to specialize in working with those who have been a witness to or a victim of a crime. In her free time, Marina likes going on walks, writing, and spending time with her family, friends & pets.

Anabella Amer

Anabella is a junior majoring in Psychology with a minor in Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS). She is part of the video coding team at the lab. After her undergraduate degree, she plans to pursue a PsyD in clinical-developmental psychology. Her research interests involve the impact of maltreatment on children, interactions between parents and children, and child development as a whole. She aspires to become a Family and Child Clinical Psychologist to hopefully be able to advocate for maltreated children and work with families every day. In her free time, she enjoys reading, cooking, and being with loved ones.

Seunghee Ham

Seunghee Ham is in the class of 2025 majoring in Psychology with a life science focus. Currently, she is an undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Gilmore’s lab and Dr. Lunkenheimer’s lab at Penn State. She works on the video affect coding team and data collection team. She analyzes the emotional interaction between caregiver and child and oversees all crucial data during the experiments. This role allows her to develop her research skills and contribute to projects in the lab, a crucial step in becoming a clinical psychologist. Her academic interests are primarily in Clinical Psychology, and she intends to pursue an MD and/or Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. She aspires to pursue a career as a clinical psychologist. She wants to improve perspectives on psychotherapy and provide & settle better psychotherapy/counseling services at the University in Korea.

Lab Alumni

Adrianna Méndez-Fernández

Adrianna is now doing a PhD on Clinical Psychology at Binghamton University.

Fanwen Zhang

Fanwen is now studying human development and family studies at the University of Connecticut.

Helena Her

Helena is now a project coordinator at the YETI Lab at The University of Pittsburg Medical Center.

Jane Lee

Check back soon to see what Jane is up to!

Longfeng Li

Longfeng is now an Assistant Professor in the college of Education, Health, and Human Services at Florida State University.  

Rachel Tambor

Rachel is now studying school psychology at the University of Delaware. 

Riley Wendling

Riley is now studying clinical psychology at William James College.