University of Puerto Rico, B.A. in Psychology (2010)

Background

Samia was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. As a member of the NIMH-Career Opportunities in Research Education and Training Program (COR) at her home school, Samia worked with Dr. Guillermo Bernal from 2008 until 2010. His project is a randomized clinical trial on how to optimize cognitive-behavioral therapy for adolescents diagnosed with depression. Samia's honors thesis studied the factor structure of depression among a sample of Hispanic children and adolescents.

Samia has also participated in summer research programs at Rutgers University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2008 and 2009, respectively. At Rutgers, Samia worked with medical anthropologist Peter Guarnaccia, PhD. Her project on nervios and socioeconomic status burgeoned from Dr. Guarnaccia's work on ataques de nervios, an idiom of distress particular to Latinos. In Maryland, Samia worked at the Culture, Child and Adolescent Development Lab under Dr. Charissa Cheah’s mentorship. While in Maryland Samia studied the role of self-esteem and romantic relationship quality on adolescent mothers' health and risk behaviors; and, conducted home visits with adolescent mothers to administer questionnaires and videotape naturalistic mother-child interactions. Samia is currently working with pregnant women with depression and women with postpartum depression with Dr. Cynthia Battle.