This page highlights the current events, achievements, and current activities of our lab members:
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Congratulations to Dr. Taku on receiving the Faculty Research Excellence Award! This award recognizes outstanding faculty for their significant achievements in research. Through her hard work and dedication, Dr. Taku earned this honor. We are so proud of Dr. Taku, for her continued commitment and dedication to her research and mentoring her students in the…
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In our lab meeting this past week, Marina, Paxton, and Gina presented their progress on a study aimed to understand volunteer recruitment, participation, and retention in a hospital-based program called No One Dies Alone (NODA). The goal of NODA is to provide companionship and a reassuring presence to terminally ill patients who are expected to…
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Last week, the FF-TIP Lab had a lot to celebrate, and we would love to share it with you! First up, we have Taylor, who recently passed her comprehensive exams and has officially become a PhD candidate. Taylor has expanded her research interests and knowledge during her time here at Oakland and has successfully applied…
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We couldn’t be happier to start our New Year together with our first lab meeting of the Winter semester (even if it is virtual)! Yesterday, we met and updated each other on our research progress and where we see our research going this semester. We also discussed our upcoming plans for attending the 2026 APA…
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Looking back on the Fall 2025 semester, we couldn’t have asked for a better way to end the year! With so many great presentations, there are just two more we want to touch on before moving on to 2026… Up first, Katie Romzek, who recently graduated with her bachelor’s degree, gave a wonderful presentation on…
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Marina, a second-year PhD student in the FF-TIP Lab, recently had the opportunity to collaborate with Dr. Sakamoto of Nihon University in Japan. After being introduced in early fall 2024, Marina began working with Dr. Sakamoto’s existing dataset, which she developed into a conference poster for the 2025 annual MPA conference. This initial project soon…
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Congratulations are in order as we had 5 of our current lab members and 1 former lab member graduate this past weekend! We would like to congratulate our research assistants, Conner Cole-Salem, Katie Romzek, Gina Reyes, and Logan Porter for graduating with their undergraduate degrees this semester. We also want to congratulate Paxton Hicks for…
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Recently, Gina Reyes, a senior undergraduate research assistant, gave an insightful presentation on her independent study titled “Grief Perceptions & Norms.” To begin, Gina described how societal beliefs and expectations about grief can shape what is considered a “normal” or “healthy” grieving process—often leading to disenfranchised grief, or grief that is not socially recognized or…
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We would like to congratulate Paxton Hicks, a second year Master’s student in the FF-TIP Lab, who has officially defended his Master’s thesis! Paxton impressed his committee, with an insightful and engaging presentation on self-disclosure depenetration, earning acceptance with no revision requests. Paxton introduced us all to the concept of self-disclosure, before discussing the lack…
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Last week, the lab had the opportunity to hear from Conner, who presented an article titled “Treatment initiation and dropout from prolonged exposure and cognitive processing therapy in a VA outpatient clinic” by Shannon M. Kehle-Forbes, Laura A. Meis, Michele R. Spoont, and Melissa A. Polusny. This article aimed to report the initiation and dropout…
FF-TIP LAB 