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The IOG welcomes six new pre-doctoral students to its training program this fall, a class with strong academic skills and a passion for working on issues that impact older adults. The trainees come from varied disciplines including social work, anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, clinical psychology and nursing. Click on each name for a brief bio: Alexis Campbell, Bradley Dixon, Moyosoreoluwa Jacobs, Candace Ryan, Laura Sutherland, and Parisa Vahidi.

Alexis Campbell

• Doctoral student in Behavioral Cognitive Neuroscience
• Master's degree in occupational therapy
• Licensed, practicing therapist specializing in neurorehabilitation
• Trainee goal: to research the contributions of health and lifestyle factors to ongoing changes in brain structure and function, and then translate the findings to improve real-world outcomes for patients needing neurorehabilitation

Bradley Dixon

• Doctoral student in Clinical Psychology
• Presented research posters at several conferences
• Submitted an abstract to the 2022 Gerontological Society of America
• Trainee goal: to study factors related to healthy aging with special interest in tools to identify persons vulnerable to financial exploitation

Moyosoreoluwa Jacobs 

• Doctoral student Clinical Psychology
• Master's degree in counseling from West Virginia University
• Worked as a research assistant at West Virginia University's Neuropsychology Clinic, where she examined biological, social, and psychological factors underlying mild cognitive impairment and other neurodegenerative disorders
• Trainee goal: to research the neuropsychological aspects of aging and Alzheimer's disease and provide clinical services to older adults

Candace Ryan

• Doctoral student in Nursing
• Master's degree in nursing plus experience as a nursing clinical instructor and lecturer at the University of Windsor
• Won a competitive WSU Rumble Fellowship and a University of Windsor Founders Research Support Grant from a nursing honor society
• Trainee goal:  to conduct clinical translational research to support better self-management of hypertension among older African Americans, through improved medication adherence and self-education

Laura Sutherland

• Doctoral student in the Social Work and Anthropology (SWAN)
• Coauthored a paper currently under review at Social Work in Health Care
• Presented posters at Gerontological Society of America meetings and other national conferences
• Volunteers with the IOG's Art of Aging Successfully Conference
• Trainee goal: to investigate how various art projects and artistic creativity can shape and support personhood among older adults with dementia

Parisa Vahidi

• Doctoral student in Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience
• M.Sc. in clinical psychology from Iran University of Medical Sciences
• Co-authored two peer-reviewed papers
• First-authored a poster presentation at the 2022 Cognitive Neuroscience Society
• Trainee goal: to identify neurophysiological mechanisms of memory retrieval. With the help of Dr. Noa Ofen, she has identified a rare and suitable data set to investigate this topic