Current/Past Scholars

Bio

Amy Noser, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Dr. Noser is both a researcher and behavioral medicine clinician. She is a clinical child psychologist who specializes in integrated behavioral care and helping children and their families address treatment barriers. Her research focuses on adherence and self-management behaviors and the use of digital tools to assess and intervene on these behaviors in youth with chronic conditions and their families.

Research Summary

Adherence and self-management, eHealth & mHealth, health lifestyles, and behavior change.

Clinical Summary

Medical treatment adherence, behavior therapy, parent training, functional pain management, depression, and anxiety.

Bio

Junia de Brito, PhD, MPH, MBA, is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Dr. de Brito identifies as a social-behavioral epidemiologist, and her research is focused on investigating the interplay of structural and social determinants of health and health-related behaviors that contribute to obesity and cardiometabolic health disparities among children of racialized and other marginalized groups.

Research Summary

Health equity, structural racism and discrimination, life course trajectories, health behavior change, weight-related health, cardiometabolic health, mental health, and mixed-methods.

Teaching Summary

Social and behavioral epidemiology, social determinants of health, eating behaviors, physical activity and sedentary behaviors, cardiometabolic health, pediatric obesity, maternal and child health, positive deviance, green spaces, and health disparities.

Bio

Dr. Catherine (Casey) Burrows is an Assistant Professor and licensed psychologist in the Autism and Neurodevelopment Clinic at the University of Minnesota. She completed her doctoral (PhD) training at the University of Miami, and clinical pre-doctoral internship at Duke University Medical Center in the autism track. She received a postdoctoral fellowship from the University of Minnesota's Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (MNLEND) program.
Clinically, Dr. Burrows conducts comprehensive evaluations for autism spectrum disorders and related neurodevelopmental disorders. She also conducts individual and group therapy in the Autism and Neurodevelopment Clinic, and is a certified Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) therapist.
Dr. Burrows's research focuses on identifying and treating co-occurring mental health problems in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. She oversees clinical training activities within several autism-focused grants at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota and maintains research collaborations with national and international colleagues. She is a member of several professional organizations, including the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR), Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), and the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD).

Bio

Dr. Paulsen’s research interests are directed towards improving neurometabolic outcomes for infants exposed to nutritional stress during the perinatal period. She uses pre-clinical models to study how stress changes the development of the hypothalamus causing chronic disease later in life. Ultimately, Dr. Paulsen would like to identify clinical biomarkers that predict early risk for chronic neurometabolic disease and develop perinatal neuroprotective interventions that prevent or lessen this risk.