Medical Student Opportunities
This page features current research projects led by BSSM faculty and provides contact details for medical students interested in joining their labs. Explore opportunities to get involved, gain hands-on experience, and contribute to cutting-edge medical research.
Faculty Members
- Email: angelina.sutin@med.fsu.edu
- Research Interests: Well-being (e.g., purpose in life), psychological function (e.g., personality), cognitive aging, Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, mental health, health behaviors, weight discrimination.
- Current Projects: Short- and long-term cognitive, social, and physical health correlates of purpose in life across adulthood; the association between personality traits and health and well-being in daily life; social and psychological predictors of changes in cognitive function over time and risk of dementia in older adulthood; social and psychological predictors of subjective cognitive aging.
- Email: javier.rosado@med.fsu.edu (Immokalee Campus)
- Research Interests: Childhood trauma, toxic stress, and adverse childhood experiences; Implementation science and community-based research.
- Current Projects: longitudinal study on the cumulative health consequences of child exposure to chemical and non-chemical stressors among rural children from agricultural communities; implementation of behavior intervention for families exposed to adverse life experiences; arts in health initiatives to improve health outcomes.
- Email: karen.macdonell@med.fsu.edu
- Research Interests: HIV prevention and care among youth and emerging adults; Digital health interventions; Motivational interviewing and behavioral health interventions; Health disparities in youth; Asthma and chronic disease self-management; Implementation science and intervention optimization; Global health.
- Current Projects: Opportunities for med students are primarily in my work in asthma, focused on improving asthma management and control in emerging adults:
- Detroit Young Adult Asthma Project (NHLBI P30, R34, and R01).
- Asthma and technology in emerging African American adults (ATHENA; NINR R01).
- North Florida Asthma Program (formative work).
- Email: laura.reidmarks@med.fsu.edu
- Research Interests: Alcohol and substance use in emerging adults, mental health, sexual risk behaviors, mindfulness.
- Current Projects: Engaging college students in mindfulness using mobile health (mHealth) tools, developing tailored messages, app gamification to increase mHealth intervention usage.
- Email: mary.gerend@med.fsu.edu
- Research Interests:
- Cancer prevention (HPV vaccination and cancer screening).
- Health messaging and health communication.
- Weight discrimination/stigma and health.
- Current Projects:
- Using cancer survivor narratives to promote HPV vaccination.
- Weight stigma and cancer screening (breast and cervical cancer screening).
- Weight stigma and mental health.
- Email: michael.nair-collins@med.fsu.edu
- Research Interests: Determination of death, brain death and disorders of consciousness, organ transplantation ethics, medical futility, end of life ethics.
- Current Projects: I’m available to mentor medical students interested in bioethics research.
Students would engage in their own supervised bioethics research project and should consult Dr. Nair-Collins to explore possibilities. The student can have a specific topic in mind or can receive guidance in choosing or refining a research question.
- Email: nennis@fsu.edu
- Research Interests: HIV, Episodic/Problematic Substance Use, Medical Marijuana, Dissemination and Implementation Science.
- Current Projects: This project examines medical marijuana use as the exposure variable in adults age 50 and older and simulated driving performance (i.e. errors in response time, attention, and executive functioning tasks that predict on-road performance) as the primary outcome and explores the association between medical marijuana use and adverse effects.
- Email: yang.hou@med.fsu.edu
- Research Interests: Exploring how biopsychosocial factors influence the neurobehavioral (i.e., cognitive, academic, socioemotional, and behavioral) development of individuals with rare diseases like Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1).
- Current Projects:
- NF1 Cognitive Aging: Investigating cognitive patterns and the demographic, biological, and psychosocial factors associated with cognitive function in middle-aged and older adults with NF1.
- SMART-NF1 (Studying Momentary Assessment of Resilience and Thinking in Adolescents with NF1): Examining the daily neurobehavioral profile of adolescents with NF1 and identifying psychosocial and lifestyle predictors of momentary or daily cognitive function.
- Deason, K. G., Luchetti, M., Karakose, S., Stephan, Y., O'Súilleabháin, P. S., Hajek, A., Sutin, A. R., & Terracciano, A. (2025). Neuroticism, loneliness, all-cause and cause-specific mortality: A 17-year study of nearly 500,000 individuals. Journal of Affective Disorders, 368, 274-281.
- Evaluating the current evidence for the efficacy of cannabis in symptom management of endometriosis-associated pain
S Calleson Cummings, N Ennis, K Kloss, R Rosasco
Integrative Medicine Reports 3 (1), 111-117
- Gerend, M. A., Ramirez, R. E., Sutin, A. R., & Maner, J. K. (in press). Demographic predictors of internalized weight stigma in a diverse sample of US adults. Stigma and Health.
- Gerend, M. A., Wilkinson, L. J., Sutin, A. R., Rosado, J. I., Ehrlich, K. B., Smith, D. W., & Maner, J. K. (2024). Sociodemographic predictors of perceived weight discrimination. International Journal of Obesity, 48, 1231-1237.
- Gerend, M. A., Zetrenne, S., Sutin, A. R., Naar, S., & Maner, J. K. (2023). Weight discrimination and health risk behavior in racial, ethnic, and sexual minority adults. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 57, 571-581.
- Gerend, M. A., Stewart, C., & Wetzel, K. (2022). Vulnerability and resilience to the harmful health consequences of weight discrimination in Black, Latina, and sexual minority women. Social Science & Medicine, 315, 115555.
- Gerend, M. A., Patel, S., Ott, N., Wetzel, K., Sutin, A. R., Terracciano, A., & Maner, J. K. (2022). A qualitative analysis of people’s experiences with weight discrimination. Psychology and Health, 37(9), 1093-1110.
- Hall, A.L., Movva, P., Daily, R., Gibson-Scipio, W., Baptist, A.P. & MacDonell, K.K. (2024). COVID-19 vaccine intentions and attitudes in Black American emerging adults with asthma. BMC Public Health, 24, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18843-w.
- MacDonell, K.K., Bruzzese, J., Dinaj-Koci, V., Gibson-Scipio, W., Starbird, W., Hall, A., Dailey, R., Jacques-Tiura, A., & Wang, B. (2023). Predictors of adherence to controller medication in urban African American emerging adults with uncontrolled persistent asthma. Journal of Asthma, 1-8.
- Ramsey, W. A., Berlin, K. S., Del Conte, G., Lightsey, O. R., Schimmel-Bristow, A., Reid Marks, L., & Strohmer, D. C. (2021). Targeting self-criticism in the treatment of nonsuicidal self-injury in dialectical behavior therapy for adolescents: a randomized clinical trial. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 26(4), 320-330. https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.12452
- Reid Marks, L., Yang, Y., Miller, H., Morgan, M., Yoon, E. & Naar, S. (2023). Perceived COVID-19 threat, psychological distress, and perceived increases in alcohol and cannabis use in diverse emerging adults at the onset of the pandemic. Emerging Adulthood, 11(6), 1476-1488.. https://doi.org/10.1177/21676968231198908
- Reid Marks, L., Hayes, L., Amos, A., Moore, K. & Dark, T. (2023). Don’t judge me ‘til you walk through my shoes”: A qualitative investigation of the experiences of women living with HIV. Ethnicity & Health, 28(8), 1128–1144. https://doi.org/10.1080/13557858.2023.2231667
- Reid Marks, L., Acuff, S. F., Withers, A. J., MacKillop, J., & Murphy, J. G. (2021). Adverse childhood experiences, racial microaggressions, and alcohol misuse in Black and White emerging adults. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 35(3), 274-282. 6https://doi.org/10.1037/adb0000597
- Rosado, J. I., Gabany, S., Fortino, M., & Fernandez-Garcia, F. (2025). Examining Interventions for Pediatric Adverse Childhood Experiences in an Integrated Primary Care Setting. Journal of Pediatric Health Care, 39(2). doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedhc.2024.10.015
- Rosado, J. I., Mesidor, J. K., Chege, S., Wang, Y., Torres, L., & Stanwood, G. (2024). Assessment of Adverse Childhood Experiences in Adolescents from a Rural Agricultural Community: Associations with Depressive Symptoms and Psychosocial Problems. Neurotoxicology and Teratology, 106. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ntt.2024.107396
- Rosado, J. I., & Torres, L. (2024). Planning for Long-term recovery: The Impact of COVID-19 on educators working with children from Migrant Agricultural Families. Journal of School Health, 94(11). doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/josh.13514
- Rosado, J. I., Reyes, E., Montgomery, J., Wang, Y., Malloy, C., & Simpson-O'Reggio, A. M. (2023). From Planning to Implementation: Developing an ACE Screening Protocol in a Rural Integrated Primary Care Clinic Serving Latino Children. Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology.
- Rosado, J. I., Ramirez, A., Montgomery, J., Reyes, E., & Wang, Y. (2021). Adverse Childhood Experiences and its Association with Emotional and Behavioral Problems in U.S. Children of Latino Immigrants. Child Abuse & Neglect, 112.
- Rosado, J. I., Rivera, A., & Fernandez, T. (2020). Perceived role of built and social environments on childhood obesity: a photoVoice approach with Latino migrant farm-working families. Family and Community Health, 43(3), 8. doi:10.1097/FCH.0000000000000257
- Starbird, W.* & MacDonell, K.K. (2021, September). Asthma related anxiety mediates relationship between self-efficacy and adherence in young adult African Americans. Abstract presented at American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) Family Medicine Experience on September, 2021.
- Sutin, A. R., Cajuste, S., Stephan, Y., Luchetti, M., Kekäläinen, T., & Terracciano, A. (2024). Purpose in life and slow walking speed: Cross-sectional and longitudinal associations. GeroScience, 46, 3377-3386.
- Tanios, V., Terracciano, A., Luchetti, M., Stephan, Y., & Sutin, A. R. (2022). Personality traits at age 16 and risk of metabolic syndrome at age 46. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 155, 110744.
- Terracciano, A., Artese, A., Yeh, J., Edgerton, L., Granville, L., Aschwanden, D., Luchetti, M., Glueckauf, R., Stephan, Y., Sutin, A. R., & Katz, P. (2020). Effectiveness of Powerful Tools for Caregivers on caregiver burden and on care recipient behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 21, 1121-1127.e1.