Our Team
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.
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Jerry Root, MA, SPHR
Director of Strategic Initiatives
Jerry studied psychology and sociology at the University of Central Oklahoma and attained a master’s in industrial-organizational psychology from the University of Tulsa. Over the next 20 years, Jerry assumed operational roles in human resources and training and development functions within large, medium and small organizations at corporate, regional and local locations, mostly in for-profit insurance and professional services. Recent years served to realign and solidify a purpose in the non-profit areas of local early childhood development serving at-risk Oklahoma families, and the research and programs needed to sustainably interrupt the effects of situational and generational stress and adversity here in Oklahoma. Jerry first connected with Dr. Hays-Grudo at OU-Tulsa and served as the Project Director of the Tulsa Children’s Project. He then served as the Chief Human Capital Officer at Tulsa Educare before relocating to Stillwater to help Dr. Hays-Grudo with the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity (CIRCA). He now serves as the Director of Strategic Initiatives for CIRCA and manages a new stress reduction program for first responders across the state called Mindful First Responders. He is also pursuing a development track to teach Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction programs.
Amanda Sheffield Morris, PhD
Recruitment, Engagement, Collection & Analysis (RECA) Core Director
Amanda is the George Kaiser Family Foundation Chair and Regents Professor in the Department of Psychology at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Morris is a developmental scientist with research interests in parenting, socio-emotional development, and risk and resilience. She is endorsed as an Infant Mental Health Research Mentor, Level IV, and is a certified Trainer of Trainers for Active Parenting programs. Dr. Morris is a Principal Investigator on the NIH funded HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study. Dr. Morris also serves on the ABCD Culture and Environment work group as part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study at LIBR. She has authored numerous articles and chapters on child and adolescent development and the neuroscience of emotion regulation and parenting. Dr. Morris is an Associate Editor for the new Journal Adversity and Resilience Science: Research and Practice published by Springer. She is also a co-author of the in-press book, Adverse and Protective Childhood Experiences: A Developmental Perspective published by the American Psychological Association.
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Lana Beasely, PhD
Director of Resilience, Adversity, and Interventions
Dr. Lana Beasley is a licensed Clinical Child Psychologist and the Director of Resilience, Adversity, and Interventions at CIRCA. Dr. Beasley’s research has included working on randomized clinical trials and program evaluation all in the area of supporting children and families experiencing high-risk factors. She holds expertise in qualitative research and has been a co-investigator on many grants involving a program of research developing, implementing, evaluating, and expanding evidence-based home visiting programs serving populations facing adversity. Dr. Beasley also conducts mixed-methods research in the area of adaptation of treatments for diverse populations and examining engagement and attrition of families experiencing high-risk factors.
Julie Croff, PhD
Biological Systems (BioS) Core Co-Director
Dr. Croff is a Professor in the Department of Rural Health at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences. She currently serves as the President of the American Academy of Health Behavior. Dr. Croff co-directs the biological systems core, focusing on supporting remote data collection for pilot and research projects for CIRCA. Dr. Croff has served in other administrative and leadership roles across the OSU system, including as Founding Executive Director of the National Center for Wellness and Recovery, Associate Director for Research for the Center for Family Resilience, and Founding Director of the Master of Public Health program. Dr. Croff’s research focuses on substance use among diverse cohorts of women. She is currently the contact Principal Investigator the Oklahoma site of the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) study, a national longitudinal research project which seeks to better understand the role of prenatal exposures on neurodevelopment.
Kent Teague, PhD
Biological Systems (BioS) Core Co-Director
Dr. Kent Teague, Assistant Vice President for Research, leads the research efforts at OU-Tulsa. Dr. Teague is a biomedical researcher who specializes in studying the effects of psychosocial stress and chronic inflammation on the immune system and the downstream effects on health. He earned a PhD in Immunology from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in 1995, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the field of immunology at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Denver in 1999. He joined the OU College of Medicine in 2000 where he directs the OU-Tulsa Integrative Immunology Center. Dr. Teague is also the Associate Dean for Research for the OU-TU School of Community Medicine, a Professor in the OU Department of Surgery, an Adjunct Professor in the OU Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, an Adjunct Professor in the OU Department of Psychiatry, and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Immunology at the OSU Center for Health Sciences in Tulsa. Dr. Teague holds the George Kaiser Family Foundation Chair in Community Medicine Research and is a member of the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine Academy of Teaching Scholars.
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Jens Jespersen, PhD
Research Scientist
My name is Jens Jespersen, and I am a Research Scientist at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, working at the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity. I received my doctorate in Human Development and Family Science from OSU with an emphasis in infant mental health. My research interests are centered around how early relationships and experiences influence social and emotional development in infants and young children, and how protective experiences influence child and family development and functioning in the context of early adversity. I am a mixed-methods researcher involved with work evaluating various parenting, health, and education programs across the State of Oklahoma.
Kaylen Smith, BS
Program Coordinator
Kaylen Smith graduated from Oklahoma State University with an undergraduate degree in Psychology. Kaylen explored a career in marketing for a few years after graduating, and now assists with community outreach and dissemination efforts in her role as a program coordinator at CIRCA. Additionally, Kaylen is training to facilitate and help coordinate a stress reduction program for first responders, called Mindful First Responders.
Chibing Tan, PhD
Staff Scientist
Dr. Tan directs the Flow Cytometry Laboratory at the Integrative Immunology Center. He is an expert in multiparametric flow cytometry. He is a certified operator of the MoFlo™ XDP high-speed cell sorter. He earned his PhD in Polymer Chemistry and Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Biochemistry and Biophysics at the OUHSC in Oklahoma City and a second postdoctoral fellowship in Immunology at the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine in Tulsa.
Ahlam Alarbi, PhD
Lab Manager
Dr. Alarbi is a Lab Manager at the Hardesty Center for Clinical Research & Neuroscience at the OSU Center for Health Sciences. She has a Master’s in Biochemistry and a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Tulsa. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Surgery and the Integrative Immunology Center at the OU-TU School of Community Medicine. Dr. Alarbi is an expert in biomarker and cellular analysis.
Ashlee Rempel, MBA
Lab Manager
Ashlee Rempel serves as the Integrative Immunology Center Laboratory Manager and Business Manager. Ashlee has been employed at the University of Oklahoma since 2002, beginning as a Research Assistant II in the Department of Pediatrics at the OUHSC in Oklahoma City. She joined OU - Tulsa as a Research Assistant II in 2005. She assumed the role of Research Associate and Laboratory Manager in 2009. She has a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology and a Master's in Business Administration from Oklahoma State University. She is a certified flow cytometrist and an expert in flow-based cytokine bead arrays, ELISA, MSD arrays, and other biomarker technologies.
Brenda Davis, BS
Research Coordinator
Brenda Davis is a senior research technician with extensive experience in human tissue/blood processing, blood and saliva biomarker analyses, molecular biology and recombinant DNA technology. She serves as the Integrative Immunology Center’s clinical studies coordinator and oversees human tissue processing and cryogenic storage. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from The Oklahoma State University.
Internal Advisory Committee
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