Lab yoga at The Forks — Summer 2020
Lab gathering at The Forks — June 26th, 2019
front row (L to R): Heidi Barkman, Lara Penner-Goeke, Kathryn Rollins, Shaelyn Stienwandt, Lauren Kaminski, Chhavvy Narendra
back row (L to R): Elbereth Luo, Lynette Bonin, Sandra Hunter, Marlee Salisbury, Chantal Delaquis, Allyson Paton, Sydney Puhach
Principal Investigators
Leslie E. Roos, PhD – Clinical Psychology – CV
Ryan J. Giuliano, PhD – Cognitive Neuroscience – CV
Dr. Leslie E. Roos is an Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba, with appointments in Psychology and Pediatrics. She aims to prevent the intergenerational transmission of stress-linked health inequities by developing scalable programs that promote parent mental health and family relationships. In her basic science research, Dr. Roos takes a multi-modal approach across neurobiology, cognitive function, and parent-child observation methods to identify opportunities to improve program efficacy. Dr. Roos also consults on program evaluation with local agencies and international teams to advance community-sourced solutions for stress-exposed families, starting in the prenatal period. Dr. Roos completed her clinical residency at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Oregon (2018). She is Junior Fellow at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, Affiliated Researcher with the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba and Chair of the Academic Research Committee at the Until the Last Child Foundation. As a mother of two young children, Dr. Roos is also familiar with many parenting challenges and continually impressed with the incredible effort families put forward every day.
Dr. Ryan J. Giuliano is an Associate Professor at the University of Manitoba in the Department of Psychology. Ryan’s work emphasizes the interplay between neurocognitive function and peripheral measures of stress physiology. To this end, Dr. Giuliano primarily uses electrophysiological measures of neural activity (electroencephalography, EEG) and cardiac activity (electrocardiography, ECG; impedance cardiography, ICG) to elucidate individual differences in behaviour and brain function as a function of stress. In this work, stress is examined both in terms of chronic and acute stress, measured through a combination of self- or parent-reported experiences with various stressors and adverse circumstances, as well as through laboratory inductions of concurrent stress. Dr. Giuliano is also a proud advocate for scientific outreach and prioritizes disseminating results from the latest findings in developmental science and cognitive neuroscience in public-friendly talks aimed at non-experts given around the local community.
Post-doctoral Scholars
Emily Cameron
Emily is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychology under the mentorship of Dr. Leslie Roos and Dr. Tracie Afifi. She completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Calgary in 2020 and Clinical Residency in the Department of Clinical Health Psychology at the University of Manitoba. Emily’s research interests focus on biological, psychological and social influences on early child development. Her background is in parental factors in pregnancy and the postpartum that influence child development, with a particular interest in paternal mental health. Her postdoctoral work extends this line of research into additional sensitive periods of child development to inform the development and implementation of programs that address child and parent needs.
Tasmia Hai
Tasmia is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Manitoba and the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba. She will be joining the Hearts and Minds Lab, working under the supervision of Dr. Leslie Roos and Dr. Lianne Tomfohr-Madsen to investigate the impact of an e-mental health app on improving child mental health by supporting mothers. Tasmia recently completed her PhD in School and Clinical Child Psychology at the University of Alberta.
Charlie Rioux
Charlie is a postdoctoral fellow in Psychology under the supervision of Dr. Roos and Dr. Lianne Tomfohr-Madsen (University of Calgary). She completed a PhD in Psychology at Université de Montréal in 2018 and a first postdoctoral fellowship (2018-2021) in quantitative psychology (developmental methodology) at Texas Tech University. She conducts interdisciplinary research in prevention science with the aim of identifying early intervention targets for preventing developmental problems and has expertise in the interplay of individual and environmental factors in the prediction of psychopathology. Her background is in observational research, particularly using longitudinal cohort studies. Her postdoctoral fellowship extends that expertise to experimental, clinical research by examining for whom parenting and mental health interventions are most effective.
Graduate Students
Allie Conway
Allie holds her undergraduate Honours in Psychology. Allie is beginning her first year of the Master’s program in School Psychology at the University of Manitoba. Allie’s research interests include family well-being, psychopathology, and stressors in educational context. Allie’s long-term goals focus on the development of psychopathology associated with the impact of chronic stress on parent-child relationships. In her off time, Allie enjoys spending time with her friends and family, playing video games, and spending time outdoors.
Cici Guo
Cici is in her second year of the Clinical Psychology MA program. She graduated from Western University where her thesis focused on borderline personality traits, stigma, and treatment seeking behaviour. Currently, she is under the supervision of Dr. Leslie Roos, researching parental sensitivity and maternal mental health. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, reading, canoeing, and hanging out with her goldendoodle, Miffy.
Sandra Hunter
Sandra is an Indigenous mother and grandmother who is in the first year of her PhD in Clinical Psychology. She has extensive experience working with parents and families in various forms and feels passionate about working in both group and individual settings. Sandra’s MA and PhD research involves traditional Indigenous parenting practices in Manitoba with the goal of increasing cultural identity and well-being for Indigenous families and communities. Sandra believes in focusing on the substantial value of intergenerational relationships and building support for promoting healthy families.
Kayla Joyce
Kayla is in the first year of her PhD in Clinical Psychology. Her research focuses on identifying the unmet program needs of postpartum mothers with co-occurring depression and at-risk substance use, an understudied and highly stigmatized population. Kayla’s long-term goal is to use research to inform the development of effective, evidence-based programs addressing the self-identified needs of postpartum mothers with depression and at-risk substance use. Outside of university, you will likely spot Kayla tending to her beloved cats and the kittens she fosters.
Sydney Levasseur-Puhach
Sydney was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She is Anishinaabe and a member of Sandy Bay First Nation. Sydney completed her Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Psychology in 2021 and is currently a Masters Student in the Clinical Psychology program at the University of Manitoba. Her research interests centre around Indigenous child and family wellbeing.
Bobby McHardy
Bobby is beginning his first year of the MA program in Clinical Psychology. His undergraduate research bridged the domains of clinical, developmental, social, and cognitive psychology, with a special interest in how relationships provide resilience and protect against adversity. Under the supervision of Dr. Leslie Roos, Bobby hopes to begin exploring self-regulation within the context of family relationships. Outside of his academics, Bobby is a distance runner, guitar player, and avid reader.
Meghan Mollons
Meghan is in her second year of the MA School Psychology program. Her research interests are supporting Indigenous mental health, and family and community wellbeing. Her Master’s research focus is on Indigenous caregiver relationships with school psychologists, with specific attention to the barriers and facilitators of caregiver engagement. In her free time she likes taking hikes with her dog or cozying up with a good book.
Chhavvy Narendra
Chhavvy is entering her second year of the MA program in Developmental Psychology. Her previous research experience largely focused on the examination of acute stress responses in caregiver-child dyads, via measures of cardiac physiology during laboratory assessments. Her research interests include understanding how caregiver-child relationship quality, stress, and depression severity impact caregiver and child psychophysiology. Her Master’s thesis, which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, will examine the impacts of social buffering and depression severity on parents’ cardiac responsivity to a remote stress induction. Outside of school, Chhavvy enjoys listening to music in various languages, travelling, and hanging out with family, friends, and her dog, Archie.
Shayna Pierce
Shayna is a Ph.D. student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Manitoba with a background in psychology, biology, and health studies. Currently, her research interests involve determining the unmet mental health support needs of women experiencing perinatal mental health concerns related to prior traumatic birth experiences and perinatal loss (miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal loss). Shayna’s long-term career goals as a Clinical Psychologist are to inform the development of medical practice guidelines for perinatal mental health screening and integration of perinatal mental health services into primary perinatal care. When not doing school-related activities, Shayna enjoys spending time travelling, hiking, or camping with friends.
Rachel Roy
Rachel completed her Honours Psychology degree at the University of Manitoba under the supervision of Dr. Toby Martin in the area of Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA). She has since had many volunteer and work opportunities in the area of ABA and with individuals with developmental disabilities. After graduation she worked as an Autism Tutor at St. Amant where she ran programming assisting young children with skill acquisition in relation to school readiness. In addition to her ABA research background, for the last two years Rachel has worked as the research coordinator for the Strategies for Patient Oriented Research (SPOR) Chronic Pain Network at the University of Manitoba under the supervision of Dr. Renée El-Gabalawy, and is the acting manager of Dr. El-Gabalawy’s lab (the Health, Anxiety and Trauma lab). She is currently involved in several chronic pain research projects examining the efficacy of a variety of treatments for chronic pain as well as clinical database development upon which future research will be conducted.
Kaeley Simpson
Kaeley is in her third year of the MA program in School Psychology at the University of Manitoba. Kaeley’s research focuses on promoting family well-being and supporting the mental health and service needs of parents and their children. Her Master’s thesis research, which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Research Manitoba examines online social support forum usage of mothers with depression and how engaging in online communities impacts maternal mental health, well-being, and self-compassion.
Mohammad Soleyman Nejad
Mohammad recently obtained a M.Sc. in Cognitive Neurocience with a GPA of 4.0 out of 4.0 from the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Before that, he earned a B.A. in Psychology with a GPA of 4.0 out of 4.0 from the University of Zanjan, Iran. During his Bachelor’s and Master’s programs, he was the top student in terms of GPA. His Master’s thesis was about the neuroaesthetics of interactions as a gateway to social cognition. During his Master’s program, he served as an intern at AgliotiLAB (SCNL – Social and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory), Italy, and the Brain Imaging Lab of Sapienza University Italy. There, he worked on investigating the neural underpinning of error monitoring and cognitive control using transcranial magnetic stimulation and functional and causal connectivity analysis of fMRI Data from the Human Connectome Project. Mohammad has presented his research findings on the meaning of education and coping styles with perceived stress among students at the Second International Conference of Psychology, Counseling and Educational Sciences, Tbilisi, Georgia, as well as presenting the results of his Master’s thesis at the FENS Forum 2022 in Paris, France. He is skilled in analyzing data with R, and proficient in Open-Sesame, MATLAB, SPM fMRI, SPSS, and C++.
Shaelyn Stienwandt
Shaelyn holds a Master’s degree in School Psychology and is beginning her first year of the Clinical Psychology PhD Program at the University of Manitoba. Shaelyn’s research interests and previous work examines dyadic parent-child interactions and their impact on the intergenerational transmission of psychopathology. Shaelyn is also passionate about supporting families through parent skills training as they navigate various aspects of their child’s development. During her free time in the summer, you can find Shaelyn golfing, backcountry camping, or on the lake. In the winter she enjoys trips to the mountains to hit the slopes on her snowboard with friends and family.
Nicole Tongol
Nicole graduated with her Honours Psychology degree in May 2022 under the supervision of Dr. Jessica Cameron at the University of Manitoba. She is looking forward to starting her Master’s in Clinical Psychology this September 2022 under the supervision of Dr. Ryan Giuliano. Her research interests include stress in the context of family systems, parent mental health, and barriers to family well-being and service access. Her long-term goals are to research stress, treatment efficacy, and mental health within families, with the aim of eventually working with Filipino communities in Canada. She greatly enjoys coordinating and supporting multiple studies in the lab. Nicole enjoys playing with her cat, crocheting, playing the ukulele, and gaming with friends.
Affiliated Graduate Students
Lindsay Berard
Lindsay is a PhD Candidate in the Clinical Psychology program. Working under the advisement of Dr. Corey Mackenzie, Lindsay’s research has explored the process of psychological help-seeking, to better understand when and how individuals come into the mental health system, to identify ways the health system can better support individual needs. Within the Hearts and Minds Lab, Lindsay has contributed to the development and facilitation of the parent skills training programs. A mom herself, Lindsay is passionate about working with mothers and parents to enable them to access the support they need during the perinatal period and while navigating the changes and challenges that come during parenthood.
Lara Penner-Goeke
Lara is in her first year of the Clinical Psychology degree at the University of Winnipeg and a research coordinator for the BEAM project. Her research interests include examining the intergenerational transmission of psychopathology and evaluating parenting interventions, particularly for families facing additional life stressors. In addition to her work in the Hearts and Minds lab, Lara is a research assistant for the Trans Youth Can! project, a national study examining medical, family and social outcomes for transgender youth seeking clinical care. In her spare time, Lara can be found outside hiking and canoeing with friends, family and a dog or two!
Kathryn Rollins
Kathryn is a Combined MCISc/PhD student in Speech-Language Pathology at the University of Western Ontario. Her research focuses on parent-led intervention for children who are late-to-talk and how early language interventions influence parent-child interactions. Kathryn previously received a CHRIM Summer Studentship and an Undergraduate Research Award for her work in the Hearts and Minds Lab. When not in front of her laptop, Kathryn can be found enjoying the many outdoor adventures Manitoba has to offer with her family and friends.
Marlee Salisbury
Marlee is currently at PhD student in Clinical Psychology at York University, who continues to collaborate on research in the Hearts & Minds Lab. Her primary research interest is in understanding how early life stress affects social-emotional development and attachment, particularly in children who are at risk for intergenerational trauma and mental illness. The long-term goal of Marlee’s research is to inform clinical practice and interventions for managing the psychological impact of chronic stress in early life. Aside from her clinical research, Marlee is a self-professed cat lady and professional thrifter!
Lab Coordinator
Allyson Paton
Allyson obtained her Honours degree in Psychology at the University of Manitoba. She has been with the Hearts and Minds lab since 2019 and started as the lab coordinator in Summer of 2021. Her previous research focused on adapting a stressor paradigm for use in virtual settings and the impact of maternal depression on children’s stress system reactivity and recovery. Her research interests include the impact of childhood adversity on development and the intergenerational impacts of mental health.
Project Coordinators
Lynette Bonin
Lynette Bonin recently completed her undergraduate psychology honors thesis on maternal dyadic interactions and child stress physiology. Lynette’s lab experience has included creating parenting materials, conducting child assessments, childcare, and video coding. She has more recently been involved with collaborating on contactless assessments and Indigenous youth wellness research. Lynette is currently completing her double major in theatre and studying as a playwright with the Manitoba Theatre Centre. She is interested in cooking, drama-based research, creating theatre, and environmental issues.
Kailey Penner
Kailey recently completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology and plans to continue her studies as a masters student in grad school. Kailey is interested in mental health promotion for children, youth and families. In her spare time, she likes to play with her dog, do puzzles and watch Netflix.
Undergraduate Students
Madeline Belows (Undergraduate Research Award recipient)
Janelle Bobula (Undergraduate Research Award recipient)
Caelan Budhoo
Allie Conway
Cynthia Cote (Undergraduate Research Award recipient)
Meghan Cowley
Kyra Cebula
Rachel Cluett
Victoria Gutscher (Honours 2022)
Isabelle Hadley
Tara Haji Abbasi
Julia Hall
Angela Jagnyziak
Ragheeba Khan
Avaline Konkin
Nadine Maranan
Enameka Parhar
Diana Prince (Honours 2022)
Sydney Puhach (Honours 2022; Undergraduate Research Award recipient)
Nicole Tongol (Honours 2022 with Dr. Jessica Cameron)
Kaitlin Zeiler (Honours 2022)
Lab Alumni
Ashley Allan (Honours 2020)
Heidi Barkman (Honours 2020)
Alanna Beyak (Honours 2021)
Lynette Bonin (Honours 2020)
Daniella Castro (Honours 2020)
Chantal Delaquis (Honours 2020; Undergraduate Research Award recipient)
Barbie Jain (Honours 2021)
Lauren Kaminski (Graduate student)
Elbereth Luo (Honours 2021 with Dr. Toby Martin; Emerging Leader Award recipient)
Carly McFall (Honours 2020)
Braeden Mitchell (Honours 2021)
Chhavvy Narendra (Honours 2021)
Michael Newman
Karen Ng (PURE Award recipient; Honours 2022)
Chester Nguyen
Allyson Paton (Honours 2021; Undergraduate Research Award recipient)
Kailey Penner (Honours 2021)
Danial Peirson (Honours 2022)
Sherry Peters (Honour 2022)
Thomas Rawliuk (Honours 2022)
Samantha Steele-Mitchell (Honors 2022)
Louise Andrea Torre (Honours 2022)
Lexie Tencha
Kathryn Rollins (Undergraduate Research Award recipient)
Marlee Salisbury (Masters 2021)
Julia Sulymka (Honours 2021)
Trevyna William (Honours 2021)
Gillian Zinko (Honours 2022)
Hearts & Minds Lab 