Adjunct Research Professors

Jo Anderson

Ph.D. (Waterloo)

Jo Anderson is the Research Director of Faunalytics, where she conducts studies on a range of topics for the benefit of animals and animal advocates. Her research interests include interventions and persuasive appeals, humane education, attitudes toward animals, meat reduction, consumer acceptance of cultured meat, and charitable behaviour. Her work focuses on improving non-human lives, including the lives of animals used for food, laboratory testing, and entertainment, as well as companion animals and wild animals.

Sara Antunes-Alves

Ph.D. (McGill)

Sara Antunes-Alves is a registered psychologist with specializations in counselling and clinical psychology. She is currently the manager of From Intention to Action (FITA), a 12-week counselling program for Carleton students. Her doctoral research at McGill University focused on psychotherapy process, and has informed ongoing outcome research of the program; she is particularly interested in investigating the predictors of effective therapy. She is also passionate about therapist training and supervision.

Kelly Babchishin

Ph.D. (Carleton)

Kelly M. Babchishin (Ph.D., Carleton) is a research advisor with Public Safety Canada, an adjunct scientist with the Institute of Mental Health Research, and holds adjunct professorships at the University of Ottawa (School of Psychology) and Carleton University (Department of Psychology). Her research involves identifying causal candidates for the onset of sexual offending behaviours, as well as improving current assessments strategies for sexual offenders. Other research interests include change in sexual offending behaviours across the lifespan, incest, and online sexual offenders.

Amanda Bullock

Ph.D. (Carleton University)

In general, her research is related to personal and interpersonal stressors and protective factors related to children and families’ well-being in different contexts. She is a scientist at the Department of National Defence where she investigates the impact of the Canadian military lifestyle on the well-being of military families. Most recently, she is involved in assessing the efficacy of various deployment-related programs on improving the resiliency of military families during the deployment process. She is also a post-doctoral researcher in the School of Psychology and Cognitive Science at East China Normal University, where she examines the meaning and implications of social withdrawal on the well-being of Chinese children and adolescents.   

Annick Buchholz

Ph.D. C. Psych, (Concordia)
Dr. Buchholz is a clinical psychologist, and lead in outcomes management and research at the Centre for Healthy Active Living (CHAL). Dr. Buchholz has also been involved in the development and evaluation of the prevention program ‘BodySense,’ a program aimed at promoting healthy body image in athletes.

She is a co-investigator on ‘Research on Eating and Adolescent Lifestyles,’ an Ottawa-based longitudinal study examining shared risk factors between eating disorders and obesity in youth. Her research interests include psychosocial risk factors related to disordered eating and weight regulation in children and youth.

Julie Caouette

Ph.D. (McGill)
Dr. Caouette focuses on the social psychology of intergroup relations, especially the attitudes of mainstream society towards minority groups, such as Aboriginal peoples. Beyond the general role of prejudice, I am interested in the specific role of social emotions, such as collective guilt, in understanding the nature of conflict between such groups.

Mario Cappelli

Ph.D. (Carleton)

Dr. Mario Cappelli is a Clinical Psychologist who for the past 25 years has specialized in working with children, youth, young adults and their families. Dr. Cappelli is the Senior Child and Youth Mental Health Clinician-Scientist at the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child & Youth Mental Health. His research focus is to develop and maintain an active program of collaborative research that informs service delivery and system level change in Ontario’s child and youth mental health sector. Dr. Cappelli is currently leading a number of projects that aim to improve service pathways between primary care and community based child and youth mental services.

Barbara Collins

Ph.D. (Ottawa)
Cognitive effects of cancer and cancer therapy; cognitive ramifications of heart disease, cardiac arrest.

Kimberly Corace

Ph.D. (York)
Current positions:  Clinical Health Psychologist, Department of Psychology and Division of Infectious Diseases at The Ottawa Hospital. Project Director, Regional Opioid Intervention Service at The Royal. Clinical Investigator at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and the University of Ottawa Institute of Mental Health Research.

Research areas: Dr. Corace conducts research in mental health, addictions, stigma, hepatitis C, and health care worker influenza vaccination uptake. She has expertise in health behaviour change, treatment readiness and adherence, and program evaluation. Her work focuses on improving treatment access, uptake, and outcomes for marginalized populations with mental health and substance use co-morbidities and developing collaborative hospital-community models of care.

Julie Dempsey

Ph.D. (Carleton)

Neda Faregh

Ph.D. (Carleton)
Dr. Faregh is a Health Psychologist and global mental health researcher with the WHO/PAHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Mental Health, at the Douglas research at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, in Montreal. She is a Research Associate with McGill Global Mental Health Program and is a fellow of the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University. She carries out mental health implementation research and policy programs in low-resource settings including the Canadian Arctic and sub-Saharan Africa. She runs a virtual mental health clinic in Chad (www.virtual-psychology-Chad) carrying out E-Training and m-health programs. Her work includes maternal mental health, adolescent sexual and reproductive health, and training of health professionals in mental, neurological, and substance use disorders.

She accepts Masters and Ph.D. students in the following areas:
Global Mental Health, Transcultural Psychology, e-health, Tele-medicine, Addictions /Gambling, and Chronic Pain.

Gary Goldfield

Ph.D. (Carleton)
Environmental and genetic risk factors, prevention and treatment of obesity and eating disorders in children, adolescents and adults.

Synthia Guimond

Ph.D. (McGill)

Dr. Guimond is a scientist at The Royal’s Institute of Mental Health Research (IMHR) and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Guimond strives to further understand and improve cognitive dysfunctions in psychiatric disorders. Some of her recent studies use digital technologies, such as smartphones and virtual reality, to better assess and treat cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Dr. Guimond also aims to investigate the brain mechanisms underpinning cognitive dysfunctions in psychiatric disorders using multimodal brain imaging techniques.

R. Karl Hanson

Ph.D. (Waterloo)

Originally trained as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Hanson was a researcher with Public Safety Canada between 1991 and 2017. His research concerns risk assessment and rehabilitation for individuals in the criminal justice and forensic mental health systems, with a particular focus on sexual offenders. He has a strong interest in the statistical methods used to quantify risk and to evaluate change over time.

Joanne L. Harbluk

Ph.D. (Western)
Dr Joanne Harbluk is a Human Factors Specialist in the Ergonomics & Crash Avoidance Division of Transport Canada.  She is active in research investigating the interaction of the driver, vehicle & road systems. Current work is focused on the safety of in-vehicle information and communication systems and the efficacy of crash avoidance and mitigation systems for drivers.

Leslie-Maaike Helmus

Ph.D. (Carleton)

Dr. Maaike conducts research on issues related to predicting offender behaviour (i.e., risk assessment, understanding risk factors) and on how to structure and improve risk assessment decisions and the communication of risk information. Maaike also enjoys conducting meta-analyses and exploring the strengths and weaknesses of different effect size metrics.

Katherine Henderson

Ph.D. (York)
Clinical Psychologist in CHEO Eating Disorder Program
Research on outcomes management, etiology, treatment, and prevention of eating disorders in children and youth.  Body image, self-esteem, family and peer functioning, coping, and emotional functioning.  Community and clinical based research.

Patrick Hill

Ph.D (University of Notre Dame, IN)

My research strives toward addressing three questions important to understanding how to promote health and well-being across the lifespan. First, what is the role of personality and individual differences in predicting health outcomes? Toward this end, my work has focused on identifying the pathways by which personality traits predict health. In turn, my research also examines the mechanisms that underlie personality development, in order to help us understand what leads to adaptive personality changes.

Second, what are the benefits associated with presumptively moral or prosocial personality characteristics? For instance, my work has demonstrated that individuals who place greater emphasis on life goals focused on benefiting others tend to report greater personal well-being. In addition, my studies suggest that being dispositionally forgiving or grateful may lead to greater psychological, emotional, and physical health.

Third, my research investigates a number of important questions related to whether and how adolescents find a purpose or direction for their lives. For instance, what does having a purpose mean to youth, and what kinds of purposes do youth nominate? In addition, my work has shown that purposeful adolescents tend to fare better across a wide array of psychological and development outcomes.

Dr. Natalia Jaworska

Ph.D. (Ottawa)

Dr. Jaworska’s research uses clinical electrophysiology (EEG/ERP) and neuroimaging (fMRI/PET) to better understand the brain in the context of mental illness. She and her team utilize these tools to understand the consequences of psychiatric interventions on the brain, and try to use objective ‘brain markers’ in predicting therapy response. Most of her work has centered on understanding brain changes in the context of mood disorders, including in adolescents/young adults. Some of her recent work has examined the effects of stimulation therapies and aerobic exercise on the brain in depressed youth; she is also studying the neural profiles in youth at different risk for addictions.

Website: N.Jaworska

Dr. Natalie Jones

Ph.D. (Carleton)

Dr. Jones’ primary research focus is the development of strengths-based, gender-informed, and culturally-sensitive risk assessment and intervention strategies for justice-involved populations. In particular, she has underscored the importance of primary and secondary prevention with at-risk youth populations, building their repertoire of protective factors to prevent or thwart future criminal justice outcomes. Additional areas of interest include the study of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in catalyzing negative outcomes along the developmental trajectory, and the examination of gender differences in the profiles and treatment needs to domestic violence perpetrators.

P.J. Kleinplatz

Ph.D. (Ottawa)
Clinical Psychologist
Contact Number: 613-563-0846
Human Sexuality, sex therapy, sexual difficulties, LGBTQ issues, sexual health inequities, low sexual desire, sexual desire discrepancy, eroticism and optimal sex.

Verner Knott

Ph.D. (London)
Using electroencephalography (EEG), brain event-related potentials (ERP), and computerized performance tasks to assess bio-behavioural markers of psychiatric disorders, the acute and chronic effects of drugs and psychotropic medications, and the early prediction of response outcome with pharmacotherapies.

Jennifer E. C. Lee

Ph.D. (Ottawa)
Dr. Lee’s research falls under the broad areas of population health data analysis and applications of occupational health psychology in the military context. Specifically, her research interests include topics such as psychological resilience, health risk perceptions and behaviours, and stress and coping.

Jeremy Mills

Ph.D. (Carleton)
Dr. Jeremy Mills is the Manager, Institutional Mental Health for the Ontario Region of the Correctional Service of Canada. He obtained his Ph.D. in Psychology from Carleton University in 2000. Dr. Mills has researched and published in the areas of risk assessment and communication, suicide assessment, and criminal attitudes and associates.

Damian O’Keefe

Ph.D. (Guelph)

Dr. O’Keefe is a Defence Scientist at the Director General Military Personnel Research and Analysis at the Department of National Defence. Dr O’Keefe’s current line of research includes Ethical Leadership, but he also has interest in the area of Occupational Personality and Integrity.

Laura Ooi

Ph.D. (Carleton)

Dr. Ooi’s research is broadly focused on social and emotional adjustment across development. More specifically, her research examines some of the risk and protective factors associated with spending more time alone (e.g., social withdrawal, solitude) from early childhood through to emerging adulthood. In particular, she is interested in examining how temperamental characteristics (e.g., shyness) and maladaptive thought patterns (i.e., cognitive biases) might impact experiences with peers and the development of internalizing problems, such as social anxiety and depression.

M.D., M.P.H.

Dr. Kathleen Pajer is the Chief of the CHEO Department of Psychiatry and the Chair of the uOttawa Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Pajer’s research has two themes.  She has spent most of her career studying the psychoneuroendocrinology of psychopathology in adolescent and young adult women, focusing on the HPA axis. The other topic is child and youth mental healthcare system improvements.  She has been funded by the National Institutes of Health in the U.S., the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), and numerous foundations and internal grants.

Dr. Pajer’s Biographical Notes

William Roberts

Ph.D. (Simon Fraser University)

Jordan Schoenherr

Ph.D. (Carleton)

Jordan Richard Schoenherr is an adjunct research professor in the Department of Psychology, Carleton University and ARL-RAP Research Fellow in the Army Cyber Institute and the United States Military Academy. His research interests include learning and metacognition (with applications in medical education, workplace incivility, and social networks), persuasive communication, as well as data and scientific integrity. His current research projects include examining the dissociation of multiple learning and decision-making systems, medical education, and the properties of social organization of science and medicine.

Michael Seto

Ph.D. (Queen)
Royal Ottawa Health Care Group
Research areas: Paraphilias, sexual offending, mentally disordered offenders

Chelsea Sheahan

Ph.D. (Carleton)

Dr. Sheahan obtained her Ph.D in Psychology from Carleton University in 2018. Currently, Dr. Sheahan is a Research Officer at Correctional Service Canada and an Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton University. Her research focuses primarily on factors that impact eyewitness memory, specifically in a developmental context. Her secondary research interests focus on juror decision making, wrongful conviction, and criminal justice and corrections research. 

Dr. Sheahan will co-supervise students who are interested in the following topics:

Eyewitness memory, juror decision making, wrongful convictions. 

Tracey Skilling

Ph.D (Queen’s)

Dr. Tracey Skilling is a registered clinical and forensic psychologist specializing in working with children and adolescents. Dr. Skilling’s main area of clinical practice is conducting comprehensive mental health assessments for youth involved with the justice system and her program of research maps onto her clinical practice. She is currently conducting a longitudinal study, now involving more than 700 justice-involved youth as they transition into adulthood, with a specific focus on examining the impact of mental health issues and treatment programming on outcomes for these youth.

Alla Skomorovsky

Ph.D. (Carleton)
Dr. Skomorovsky is a Defence Scientist at and a team leader of the Military Families’ Research team, Director General Military Personnel Research and Analysis, at the Department of National Defence, Canada. Dr. Skomorovsky conducts research in the area of occupational health psychology in the area of military families, focusing on both, child and adult health and well-being. Specifically, her research interests include topics such as psychological resilience, personality, work-life balance, mental health, stress and coping.

Jennifer E. Sutton

Ph.D. (Western)

Dr. Sutton is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Brescia University College and an Adjunct Research Professor at Western University. Her research investigates spatial cognition, particularly as it relates to navigation in large-scale space, in adults, animals, and children. Her work is funded by NSERC and currently focuses on individual differences in the spatial mental representations individuals create of new environments. In addition, she is interested in how spatial skills are changed by experiences outside the lab, such as in aviation and driving. 

Giorgio Tasca

Ph.D. (Saskatchewan)
Research Chair in Psychotherapy Research and Director of Research at The Ottawa Hospital
I am a clinical psychologist at The Ottawa Hospital. I also hold a Research Chair in Psychotherapy Research. My areas of research include psychotherapy processes and outcomes, group psychotherapy, eating disorders, and attachment theory. Students are exposed to clinical research in a dynamic lab at The Ottawa Hospital that includes a multidisciplinary group of graduate and undergraduate students, clinical psychologists, research and medical staff.

Jennifer A. Veitch

Ph.D. (Victoria)
Environmental psychology, particularly the effects of lighting on mood, task performance, and well-being; the effects of individual control over environmental conditions on occupants and on energy consumption; promoting environmentally responsible behaviour, particularly at the organizational level.

Lisa Walker

Ph.D. (Windsor)
Cognition in multiple sclerosis (e.g. cognitive fatigue, cognitive reserve, change in cognition over time, assessment of cognition, information processing speed, functional neuroimaging of cognitive processes, cognition after hematopoietic stem cell transplant, etc.)

John R. Weekes

Ph.D. (Ohio)
Substance abuse research with offenders, treatment outcome research, offender motivation for treatment, harm reduction, clinical psychopathology, and forensic psychology.

Matthew M. Young

Ph.D. (Carleton)
Dr. Matthew Young is a Senior Research and Policy Analyst at the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA) and an Adjunct Research Professor of Psychology at Carleton University. He is also lead researcher of CCSA’s monitoring and surveillance activities, which includes the Canadian Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (CCENDU) and the Student Drug Use Surveys working group (see the Cross Canada report on student alcohol and drug use for an example of the group’s activities). His research has employed community level indicators to identify new psychoactive substances (for example, see CCENDU “Bath Salts” Alert) or timely information on substance use trends (see CCENDU Opioid Bulletin) as well as survey data or hospital utilization data to assess the prevalence and harms associated with substance use. In addition, to drug use epidemiology, he is also interested in systematic reviews and rapid review methods and recently completed a systematic review assessing the effectiveness of brief interventions in reducing the non-medical use of psychoactive substances (see publications below).  Before joining CCSA, Dr. Young conducted research on problem gambling (PG) – specifically, developing and evaluating PG screening tools and assessment instruments as well as conducting PG epidemiological research.