Francesca Q
- Research Program Mentor
PhD candidate at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
Expertise
health psychology (e.g., how psychology and biology are related, how physical and mental health influence each other), stress/adversity, parent-child relationships, adolescent development, role of immune system in health, role of gut microbiome in health
Bio
I have a Master's degree, and am currently pursuing a PhD, in Developmental Psychology with minors in Health Psychology and Quantitative Psychology (Statistics). I study how children's experiences of chronic stress/adversity lead to higher risk for physical and mental health difficulties. Currently, I am examining how adversity shapes development of the gut microbiome and immune system in ways that influence mental and physical health. I have extensive experience mentoring students from high school to post-college, and am passionate about mentorship relationships as a means to spark passion for scientific research! Outside of research, I love to cook, play tennis, hang out in nature, and explore new places. I'm from Seattle, Washington and love coffee (a very common combination it seems). A cool fact about me is that I have family who live as far away on the earth as is possible -- if I dug a hole to the other side of the earth, that's where they live.Project ideas
Gut Feelings: How do the microbes in your gut relate to mental health and how can we leverage this link to inform interventions?
Recently, research on the link between the gut microbiome (the community of bacteria, viruses, and other microbes that live in the gastrointestinal tract) and mental illness has been accelerating. This work has established a potential role for the gut microbiome in illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and co-morbid physical conditions like IBS. This project will take a deep dive into the connection between the brain and gut to examine interventions for common mental health issues that target the gut microbiome (like diet, probiotics, and mind-body practices). You will learn how to read and critically evaluate research articles, organize your findings into a coherent structure, write a review paper, and even exercise your artistic/creative skills in designing accessible and informative figures.
I Feel it in My Body: The Relationship Between Mental and Physical Health
Mental and physical health are intimately connected. For example, during childhood, anxiety may manifest primarily as physical symptoms like stomachaches or headaches. Mental illnesses increase your risk of developing physical illness in the future, and vice versa. In this project, we will make use of a publicly available, large longitudinal dataset (e.g., AddHealth) to explore the relationship between physical and mental health. You will learn how to perform a literature review on a topic, develop a testable research question and hypothesis, evaluate your hypothesis using statistics, explore your data using appropriate visualizations, interpret your findings, and write up your results in a scientific paper for others to learn about.
Create a Public Health Campaign on Psychological Factors that Promote Immune Health
A large body of research shows that psychological factors like stress management, having a sense of meaning or purpose in life, and supportive social relationships can have powerful, positive health impacts via their influence on the immune system. Given the high and increasing prevalence of diseases characterized by immune dysregulation (chronic inflammation), there is a need for effective and accessible public health messaging on these topics. The goal of this project will be to create a video and/or series of short blurbs and images that distill scientific findings on psychological factors that shape immune health into easily digestible pieces of information to educate the general public. You will learn how to read scientific papers, synthesize and consolidate findings, translate those findings into easily understandable language, develop visually appealing and illustrative graphics, and communicate your findings in a widely accessible way.
How are Effects of Stress, Trauma, and Adversity Transmitted Across Generations?
Not only can stress, adversity, and trauma influence mental and physical health of someone who directly experiences them, they can also be transmitted to the next generation. In this project, you will review the literature on how mothers' experiences of stress, trauma, or adversity influence her child's development within one biological system (e.g., the brain, gut microbiome). You will learn how to evaluate scientific literature, synthesize findings across studies, and organize your work into sections, ultimately culminating in the writing of a literature review.