Drs. Schreier and Lunkenheimer are currently serving as MPIs of the CMT32 and fulfilling the roles of Program Director of Research and Training, respectively.
Primary Mentors (Program Faculty)
Brian Allen (Pediatrics) (PT Track) Collaborators: Shenk, Lunkenheimer, Noll, Schreier. Dr. Allen conducts research on clinical intervention with CM populations, with a focus on how developmental science can be integrated into clinical practice to enhance the effectiveness of treatments. He is the PI on an NICHD-funded study examining the use of Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) for maltreated youth and has conducted grant-funded research to examine the application of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) for adopted children and the development and testing of an intervention for children with problematic sexual behavior. Hi is Co-I of the TCCMS Administrative Core. He is currently supervising a postdoctoral fellow in clinical psychology and has previously mentored one postdoc and 4 and pre doc interns in clinical psychology.
Christian Connell (HDFS) (PT, PADS Tracks and PADS Track Lead) Collaborators: Font, Crowley, Jackson, Noll. Dr. Connell’s research examines behavioral, health, and system-level outcomes of youth who have been maltreated or involved in child-serving systems (e.g., child welfare, mental health, juvenile justice), as well as the effectiveness of community-based interventions to ameliorate adverse outcomes associated with maltreatment and trauma. He is Co-I on the TCCMS DOC and has extensive experience in the use of integrated administrative data systems to examine risk and protective process associated with involvement in child welfare and related systems as well as the consequences of involvement on child and family wellbeing. Additional research examines the effects of exposure to traumatic events on child psychological functioning and efforts to enhance capacity for trauma-informed care within childserving systems. Prior to joining Penn State University in 2017, he served as co-director of Yale Psychiatry Department’s Division of Prevention and Community Research, and mentored 12 predoc psychology fellows, 15 postdoc fellows, and two junior faculty members during his time at Yale University. His research has been funded by NIMH, NIDA, ACF, SAMHSA/NCTSN, and state and local government agencies
Sarah Font (SOC) (PADS Track) Collaborators: Miyamoto, Connell, Schreier, Noll. Dr. Font is a Co-I of the TCCMS DOC and conducts research on the experiences and outcomes of children involved with the Child Protective Services and foster care systems. She is PI of a NICHD R01 focusing on innovative identification strategies for understanding the implications of various experiences within the foster care system for child health and wellbeing. Her work draws primarily on administrative data and prioritizes policy-relevant research questions. She has a postdoc who will start in Fall 2019.
Yo Jackson (PSY) (DP PT Tracks) served as the original Program Director of Training on the CMT32, and is currently an Associate Director of the CMSN and a professor in the Clinical Child Psychology Program and a board-certified clinical child psychologist with over 40 publications on CM. Her work focuses on modeling the mechanisms of resilience for youth exposed to CM and the development of interventions to address the intergenerational transmission of trauma. In addition to her extensive and successful mentoring, she has held several administrative and leadership positions, including serving on the Board of Directors for Division 53 (Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology), being an APA Fellow for the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, serving as Chair of the Committee for Children, Youth and Families for APA and as Director of the Multicultural Scholars Program at the University of Kansas. She has also served as a clinic director for over 12 years for a community training and outpatient clinic serving youth and families, supervising over 60 trainees.
Dr. Lunkenheimer currently serves as the Program Director of Training for the CMT32.
Erika Lunkenheimer (PSY) (DP, BH Tracks and DP Track Lead) Collaborators: Allen, Buss, Panlilio, Jackson, Ram, Schreier. Dr. Lunkenheimer is an Associate Director of the CMSN focused on education and training of community engagement for PSU students in the CMAS minor. She examines parent-child relationship dynamics as risk and protective mechanisms in the development of self-regulation and psychopathology. Her specific areas of expertise include harsh parenting and CM risk, individual and dyadic neurobiological and behavioral regulatory processes, and dynamic time series analytic methods. She has been funded by NICHD, NIAAA, and the Institute of Educational Sciences. She is currently the Primary mentor to 7 predoc students and has one postdoc starting in Fall 2019.
Dr. Sheridan Miyamoto (NURS) (PT, PADS Tracks) Collaborators: Font, Panlilio, Schreier, Dorn, Crowley. Dr. Miyamoto’s program of research is focused on the deployment and testing of telehealth models to decrease disparities in the quality of care for victims of sexual assault in underserved communities. In collaboration with multidisciplinary network collaborators, she also studies the identification of commercial sexual exploitation of children known to child welfare agencies. She is the PI of the Sexual Assault Forensic Examination Telehealth (SAFE-T) Center, funded by the Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime. She has received grants from PCORI, NIH, Doris Duke Fellowship, and the Center for Rural Pennsylvania. She mentors 3 graduate students currently and has accepted a postdoc that will begin in Summer 2019.
Carlo Panlilio (EDPSY) (DP Track) Collaborators: Font, Lunkenheimer, Miyamoto, O’Sullivan, Schreier, Wadsworth. Dr. Panlilio’s research focuses on understanding the dynamic interplay between child maltreatment, context, and development, which shape individual differences in learning over time. More specifically, his published research explicates proximal developmental and learning processes impacted by early maltreatment experiences. He studies self-regulation and self-regulated learning, which mediate early adversity and later educational outcomes to identify malleable mechanisms for school-based intervention. He is co-PI on a Bainum Family Foundation grant to develop and test a trauma-sensitive curriculum aimed at improving pedagogical practice for early childhood educators. Dr. Panlilio currently mentors 3 doctoral students, has served on dissertation committees across disciplines, and served as a peer mentor for a current Doris Duke Fellow.
Dr. Schreier currently serves as the Program Director of Research for the CMT32.
Hannah Schreier (BBH) (B, DP Tracks and BH Track Lead) Collaborators: Allen, Font, Jackson, Lunkenheimer, Noll, Shalev, Smyth, Wadsworth, Shenk. Dr. Schreier’s research focuses on the influence of early adversity (experiences of CM; growing up in poverty) on child and adolescent chronic disease risk, especially immunological and metabolic risk markers. She is further interested in understanding the psychosocial pathways through which family and youth characteristics alter the impact of early adverse experiences on key physiological outcomes among youth. Dr. Schreier is MPI of the TCCMS Cohort Study. She is also the PI of an R01 from NHLBI investigating the impact of a coparenting intervention on parent and child cardiovascular disease risk.
Idan Shalev (BBH) (BH Track) Collaborators: Noll, Schreier, Shenk, Rose, Almeida, Buxton, Patterson, Ram, Sliwinski, Smyth. Dr. Shalev’s program of research is focused on mechanisms underpinning the biological embedding of stress, and their effects on health and aging. His research integrates the disciplines of molecular genetics, endocrinology, neurobiology and psychology. This systems approach integrates data sources across multiple levels of genomics, biomarkers and phenotypic data. As a Co-I on the TCCMS Cohort Study, he focuses on the effects of stress and maltreatment during early childhood. Dr. Shalev routinely provides training in his lab testing a host of biomarkers in blood, urine and saliva samples to elucidate biological embedding mechanisms in CM. His work has been funded primarily by NIH. He serves as a mentor for 3 predoc trainees in the NIA Pathways T32.
Elizabeth Skowron (HDFS) will be joining The Solutions Network and serve as a Primary Mentor beginning August 2025.
Dr. Skowron is a Professor of Human Development and Family Studies. Her research focuses on the neurobiology of parenting at risk, the development of self-regulation among youth exposed to CM, and the development of family interventions effective for supporting positive, healthy parenting and reducing CM. She has previously led an NICHD-funded R01 focused on implementing a randomized clinical trial of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy working with welfare-involved families. She has a pending R01 focused on a clinical effectiveness trial of this trauma-informed Parent-Child Interaction Therapy treatment for welfare-involved families.
Kathryn Spearman, MSN, RN (NURS) will be joining The Solutions Network and serve as a Primary Mentor beginning August 2025.
Dr. Spearman has been a trauma and violence predoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing supported by a T32 training grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Development under PI Dr. Jacquelyn Campbell. Her broad research interests focus on the intersection of intimate partner violence and child abuse, intimate partner violence related-homicides of women and children, structural determinants of health and safety such as family court judicial decision making, and risk-assessment and interventions that promote safety, resiliency, and recovery from trauma for children and mother/child dyads who have experienced family violence. Her scientific inquiry is informed by clinical experience working as a pediatric nurse with abused children and their mothers impacted by intimate partner violence. She is the president and founder of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Research & Advocacy Club at Johns Hopkins University. Her BS and MSN are from the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, respectively.