This fall, the Department of Psychology welcomed five new faculty members with expertise in everything from adolescent risk-taking and children’s moral development to enhancing resilience following exposure to traumatic events. We invite you to get to know their work.
Brooke Ammerman, Assistant Professor
Ammerman joins our department from the University of Notre Dame where she served as the director of the Affect, Suicide, Self-Injury, and Social Triggers (ASSIST) Lab as well as the co-director of the Notre Dame Suicide Prevention Initiative. Ammerman specializes in leveraging the use of technology for the identification, prediction, and reduction of risk for self-injurious thoughts and behaviors. She has a specific interest in how interpersonal stress can influence the onset and maintenance of these experiences. She looks forward to building connections with the counseling centers on campus and helping bolster the support provided to students who are experience suicidality. Ammerman earned her bachelor’s degree from North Dakota State University, her master’s degree from the University of Northern Iowa, and her PhD in clinical psychology from Temple University.
João Guassi Moreira, Assistant Professor
Guassi Moreira comes to us from the University of California, Los Angeles where he most recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Computational Social Neuroscience Lab. His research explores both 1) the nexus of adolescent risk-taking and emotional regulation and 2) how mental models of others influence how we behave, using functional magnetic resonance imaging in conjunction with computational methods. He hopes that one downstream application of this work will be to promote the development of healthy mental wellbeing in youths. Guassi Moreira earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his PhD in developmental psychology from UCLA.
Katie Howell, Associate Professor
A professor emerita from the Department of Psychology at the University of Memphis, Howell brings expertise in the promotion of resilience among youth and their families exposed to adversity. Specifically, her research examines how adversities in the family system affect mental illness and resilience in families and children and works to develop strengths-based interventions for trauma-exposed groups. A newly elected fellow to the American Psychological Association (Division 37: Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice), Howell is also the author or co-author of more than 130 publications and a licensed psychologist. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, and both her master’s degree and PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan.
Pearl Han Li, Anna Julia Cooper Fellow
Li joins the department this year as an Anna Julia Cooper Fellow, and will continue her work in the fall of 2025 as an assistant professor of psychology. Born and raised in mainland China, Li received her bachelor’s degree in journalism and communications at Peking University. She earned her master’s degree in human development and psychology from Harvard University and her PhD in developmental psychology from the University of Minnesota. Li’s research focuses on children’s moral development and social learning across cultures and in diverse social contexts. Specifically, she seeks to understand the distinctive ways in which children balance self-reliance and dependence on others in moral learning.
Ali Mohebi, Assistant Professor
An engineer turned neuroscientist, Mohebi’s research investigates how important brain chemicals work together or against each other to shape how information is sent and understood in the nervous system. He hopes that a better understanding of the influence major neuromodulators (dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, and norepinephrine) has on ongoing neural activity will provide insights into the underlying mechanisms of a range of neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as ADHD, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Mohebi received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Sharif University of Technology, his master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Tehran, his PhD in electrical and computer engineering from Michigan State University, and completed two postdoctoral fellowships – one in psychology from the University of Michigan and one in neurology from the University of California San Francisco.