top of page

Meet The Team

Dr. Jennifer Hays-Grudo

Jennifer Hays-Grudo, PhD

Principal Investigator, Project Director and ​Administrative Core Director ​

Regent’s professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences

From 2008 to 2013, she was a George Kaiser Family Foundation Chair in Community Medicine at OU-Tulsa, where she led the Tulsa Children’s Project, a highly integrated set of interventions to reduce the effects of intergenerational poverty and adversity. With Dr. Amanda Morris, she is the co-author of Adverse and Protective Childhood Experiences: A Developmental Perspective, published in 2019 by APA Press, and is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Adversity and Resilience Science (Springer), with the first volume published in March, 2020.  She also co-authored Raising a Resilient Child in a World of Adversity: Effective Parenting for Every Family which was released in November 2023.

Jerry Root

Jerry Root, MA, SPHR

Director of Strategic Initiatives

Amanda Sheffield Morris

Amanda Sheffield Morris, PhD

Recruitment, Engagement, Collection & Analysis (RECA) Core Director

Lana Beasely

Lana Beasely, PhD

Director of Resilience, Adversity and Interventions

Kyle Simmons

Kyle Simmons, PhD

Biological Systems (BioS) Core Co-Director

Julie Croff

Julie Croff, PhD

Biological Systems (BioS) Core Co-Director

Kent Teague

Kent Teague, PhD

Biological Systems (BioS) Core Co-Director

Jens Jesperson

Jens Jesperson, PhD

Research Scientist

Kaylen Smith

Kaylen Smith, BS

Program Coordinator

Chibing Tan

Chibing Tan, PhD

Staff Scientist

Ahlam Alarbi

Ahlam Alarbi, PhD

Lab Manager

Brenda Davis

Brenda Davis, BS

Research Coordinator

Ashlee Rempel

Ashlee Rempel, MBA

Lab Manager

Bidhan Lamichhane

Bidhan Lamichhane, PhD

Staff Scientist

Internal Advisory Committee

Darrin Akins

Darren Akins, PhD

Associate Dean for Research & Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
University of Oklahoma College of Medicine

Christine Johnson

Christine Johnson, PhD

Associate Vice President for Research & Professor of Human Development & Family Science

Oklahoma State University

Dawn Underwood

Dawn Underwood, PhD

Vice President of Research

Oklahoma State University

External Advisory Committee

Anne Mastergeorge

Ann Mastergeorge, PhD
EAC Chair

Hobart Cleveland

Hobart Cleveland, PhD

Penn_State_text_logo.svg.png
Penn State.png
Bill Beardslee

Bill Beardslee, MD

bottom of page