For more information regarding our trainees, funding and training activities contact Tam Perry, Ph.D., Director, Pre-Doctoral Training at: teperry@wayne.edu

Meet the training faculty mentors

Tam Perry, MSW, Ph.D.

Dr. Perry's research is primarily on the relocation of older adults. Her current interests focus on the experiences of relocation among older adults and their family members in Detroit. Dr. Perry is conducting a research project to analyze relocation experiences of African Americans in and around Detroit.  This study is supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health,5P30 AG015281, and the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research.  She was also recently funded by the John A. Hartford Change AGEnts Initiative. She was also recently funded by the Wayne State University Humanities Center for a project titled, "Surviving in Detroit: Men Experiencing Homelessness due to Death of a Parent."

Diane Adamo, Ph.D.

Dr. Adamo's research examines human sensorimotor control systems and performance. She is interested in the peripheral and central components associated with sensorimotor control, and more recently, the extent to which changes in cognition contribute to human performance in older individuals. Her research uses neurophysiological and behavioral approaches as complementary methods to investigate the role of proprioceptive, exteroceptive, visual information and cognitive processes in the control and regulation of sensorimotor activities.

Boris B. Baltes, Ph.D.

Dr. Baltes' research interests include examining the effects of stereotypes on workplace outcomes, age and workplace issues, and work-family balance. He currently serves as an associate/action editor for the Journal of Organizational Behavior and is on the Editorial Boards of Organizational Research Methods, Journal of Business and Psychology, and Work, Aging and Retirement. Dr. Baltes is a Fellow of SIOP (APA Division 14).  He has also been a board member for the Sloan Research Center on Aging & Workplace Flexibility at Boston College. He has been the doctoral adviser for more than 15 graduate students in psychology and he has been recognized for his mentoring and teaching by receiving both the College of Science Teaching Award (2002) and the Wayne State University Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award (2008).

Jeske Damoiseaux, Ph.D.

Dr. Damoiseaux's main research goal is to understand the changes in brain function and cognition that accompany normal and abnormal aging. She is particularly interested in examining the influence of biological and cognitive predisposition on cognitive and brain network connectivity changes in healthy older adults. The primary approach Dr. Damoiseaux uses to study brain network connectivity is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In addition, she uses other neuroimaging techniques, such as structural MRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to study brain structure and structural brain connectivity.

Ana Daugherty, Ph.D.

Dr. Daugherty directs the Healthy Brain Aging Laboratory that studies health factors and behaviors that shape changes in brain structures and functions across the lifespan. She has a particular interest in metabolic and vascular health, and studies both risk (e.g., hypertension, metabolic syndrome) and protective (e.g., aerobic exercise) factors. Towards this end, her studies include measures of brain structure from MRI, cognitive ability, blood serum biomarkers, genetics, and lifestyle behaviors. She works with adults of all ages, and in collaboration with other laboratories at the IOG, she studies the breadth of the human lifespan from childhood to late adulthood. 

Allen C. Goodman, Ph.D.

Dr. Goodman serves as Professor of Economics, and Director of the M.A. Program. He has served as the principal investigator on three R01 grants, and he served on the NIDA-F Health Services Review Committee from 2006 through 2010. Dr. Goodman co-authors The Economics of Health and Health Care, which is the leading health economics text, now in its seventh edition. He has conducted cost analysis on substance abuse treatment field for 30 years and on cancer screening for 25 years. He and Dr. Jensen Summers established the health economics field at Wayne State, and together they oversee one of the most successful health economics graduate programs in the nation. He has directed the Ph.D. and the M.A. programs in the Economics Department since 2000.

Faith Hopp, MSW, Ph.D.

Dr. Hopp holds the prestigious title of being a Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholar.  Prior to her faculty appointment at WSU, she was a Research Investigator with the Health Services Research and Development Center of Excellence at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. She has served as principal investigator and co-investigator on federal and foundation grants focused on interventions and programs for people facing chronic diseases, including heart failure and diabetes, and end of life issues for these populations. 

Thomas B. Jankowski, Ph.D.

Dr. Jankowski assumes responsibility for all aspect of the computing technology and building security at the IOG and MPSI. He also supervises several staff persons who provide direct computing support services to IOG and MPSI trainees, faculty, staff, RAs, etc. His research interests focus on adult political socialization and the effects of the aging process on political behavior, civic knowledge, and public opinion. He is also interested in the effects of race, gender, and the aging process on the development of political orientations, habits of media use, and patterns of political behavior in individuals. His website, Phinished, has garnered international recognition.

Voyko Kavcic, Ph.D.

Dr. Kavcic's long-range research goals are to investigate and understand how advanced age and/or neurodegenerative diseases, primarily Alzheimer's disease (AD), affect cerebral structures and functions. To pursue these goals he searches for converging experimental evidence from a variety of methodological approaches, including neuropsychological testing, human psychophysics, visual evoked potentials (VEPs), even-related potentials (ERPs), and MRI diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Currently, Dr. Kavcic is conducting NIH supported research project "Community-Based Early Identification of MCI in at Risk African Americans."

Peter Lichtenberg, Ph.D., ABPP

Dr. Lichtenberg founded IOG's pre-doctoral training program in 1996, and was Director of the pre-doc training program from 1996 to 2014. Dr. Lichtenberg also led the two NIH-funded T32 training grants that IOG has held for its training program over this period.  He is very active in aging and urban health, mentoring graduate students, teaching, and engaging in an active program of funded research. He is a nationally recognized expert in health disparities with a particular interest in dementia, depression and independent functioning in urban older adults. Along with Dr. James Jackson from the University of Michigan, Dr. Lichtenberg is a principal investigator on a center grant (Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research) and several other training, research and educational grants resulting in a grant portfolio over $8,000,000. A developing research interest of Dr. Lichtenberg is the evaluation of cognitive and financial competency. He is increasingly being sought out for expert testimony and consultation in complex legal cases in the state of Michigan and nationally.

Carrie Leach, Ph.D.

Dr. Leach is Co-Director of Community Engagement at the Center for Urban Responses to Environmental Stressors (CURES), and Associate Center Director for Community Inclusion at the Center for Health Equity and Community Knowledge in Urban Populations (CHECK-UP) at Wayne State University. Dr. Leach has expertise in health communication, participatory and action research, digital and health literacy, and community-based and aging services delivery and communication.

Amanda Leggett, Ph.D. 

Dr. Leggett received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from the Pennsylvania State University and is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America. Her research program focuses on the dementia caregiver stress process and mental health in late-life. She recently completed a K01 career development award from the National Institute on Aging and currently has associated funding from the Alzheimer’s Association to develop of a taxonomy of dementia care management styles and aims to determine how classifying one’s caregiving style might be used to target interventions and optimize care. She also has a new R01 grant from the National Institute on Aging exploring dementia caregiving networks and associations with care outcomes. She serves on the editorial board for the journals Innovation in Aging and Research on Aging and is a eight-year Hospice volunteer.

Mark Luborsky, Ph.D.

Dr. Luborsky is one of the foremost experts in the qualitative study of aging and health and disability across the lifespan. His current grant portfolio consists of over $7M in NIH funding as principal investigator. He has studied the personal meaning of mobility loss, the meaning of self-rated health, HIV treatment adherence, and breast cancer awareness and treatment. Ongoing research projects focus on the social consequences of hip fracture and downsizing households in late life, both funded by NIH R01 grants. His dedication to graduate student training and mentoring was recognized at WSU in 2005 when he was awarded WSU's Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award. In 2012, he completed his term as co-editor for the journal, Medical Anthropology Quarterly.

Jessica Robbins, Ph.D.

As a medical and sociocultural anthropologist, Dr. Robbins studies how individuals' experiences of aging, especially of health and illness, are part of broader cultural, political, economic, and historical processes.  Her research is motivated by a concern for how some older people become valued and socially included, while others are devalued and socially excluded. As an anthropologist, she seeks explanations for these moral processes in the links between personal experience, personal and discursive imaginations, and transformations in political economy. So far, she has sought answers to these questions through ethnographic research in Poland, a place where radical sociocultural, political, and economic transformations have occurred in the lifetime of the oldest generation.
 

Rodlescia Sneed Ph.D.

Rodlescia Sneed is a social gerontologist interested in how the social environment impacts adult developing and aging in diverse populations.  I have expertise in biopsychosocial models of health, community-engaged research, and chronic disease. My work engages community and institutional stakeholders to identify and improve upon factors that contribute to inequities in health and well-being among mid and late-life adults.

Jeffrey A. Stanley, Ph.D.

Dr. Stanley is a trained physicist in Magnetic Resonance (MR) with over 25 years of research experience in developing and applying different MR neuroimaging methodologies to investigate brain structure (myelin and cortical thickness and shape), function and biochemistry.  This has led to numerous significant contributions to the understanding of the neural basis of different psychiatric and neurologic disorders including schizophrenia, populations at risk for schizophrenia, ADHD, brain development and aging.  Dr. Stanley has established multiple collaborations with faculty members across the SOM, WSU campus and around the world and has mentored numerous trainees at different levels.  He has over 130 publications and been awarded multiple National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) R01 grants as Principle Investigator as well as a recipient of the Independent Investigator Award from National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD). 

Wassim Tarraf, MBA, Ph.D.

Dr. Tarraf is a health services researcher with a public health orientation. His work focuses on issues related to disparities in health outcomes and healthcare use among immigrant, and ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Dr. Tarraf has considerable experience using large national health datasets and is particularly skilled in advanced statistical analysis techniques.

John Woodard, Ph.D.

Dr. Woodard's research is in the following areas:  Neuropsychological and neuro-imaging studies of memory in aging and dementia; Cognitive and health-related risk factors for late life anxiety; Detection and tracking of sport related concussion; Statistical and methodological issues in neuropsychological test construction and assessment. He has numerous funded grants in these areas. He is an active teacher at Wayne State University and in 2007 was awarded Fellowship Status by the National Academy of Neuropsychology.