Team | mysite

Principal Investigator

Samuele Zilioli

Dr. Samuele Zilioli is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences at Wayne State University, Detroit. He received his Ph.D. in Cognitive and Neural Sciences from Simon Fraser University.

His research focuses on the biopsychological mechanisms by which social status and racial differences affect health and behavior. To achieve this goal, he works with individuals of various ages and conducts both laboratory experiments and correlational field studies.

Graduate Student

Elissa Kim

elissa.kim@wayne.edu

Elissa Kim is a second year Social Psychology graduate student. Elissa earned a BA in Psychology and a minor in Communications from Pepperdine University. Her research interests lie in studying how health markers can be linked to mediators/moderators of stress within minority communities to shine light on stress management. She hopes to learn more about older populations through the lens of the biopsychosocial model.

Graduate Student

Alexis Pinela

avpinela@wayne.edu

Alexis Pinela is a first year Social Psychology graduate student. She earned a BA honors degree in Psychology from the University of Southern California. She then worked as a project coordinator at the San Diego State University Social-Health and Affective Neuroscience Lab. Alexis’s research focuses on bidirectional pathways linking inflammation and psychosocial processes, with special interests in risk & resilience factors, chronic stress, and intragroup dynamics.

Postdoctoral Fellow

Kristin Davis

hp9050@wayne.edu

Kristin Davis is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychology at Wayne State University, Detroit. She received her Ph.D. in Biobehavioral Health from Penn State University. Her research focuses on behavioral and immunological mechanisms underlying racial and socioeconomic disparities in cardiometabolic health.

Project Coordinator

Jasnoor Kaur

jasnoorkaur@wayne.edu

Jasnoor earned her Master of Public Health (MPH) from Wayne State University. She has been with the Biopsychosocial Lab since 2022 and is currently the project coordinator for Asthma in the Lives of Families Today 2.0 (ALOFT) Study.

Project Coordinator

Hadi Beydoun

hc8409@wayne.edu

Hadi earned a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Biology from Wayne State University. He has been with the Biopsychosocial Lab since 2021 and is currently the project coordinator for the Heart of Detroit Study.

Data Manager

Julian Bruinsma

jubru@wayne.edu

Julian creates and maintains databases for both The Heart of Detroit study and the Asthma in the Lives in Families Today study. They are currently earning their Master's of Science in Information Science with a focus on data analytics.

Lab Alumni

Postdoctoral Fellow

Jacqueline Rodriguez-Stanley

jackie-rodriguez@pitt.edu

Jackie Rodriguez-Stanley was a graduate student in the Biopsychosocial Health Lab and earned her PhD in Social-Personality from Wayne State University in 2025. She is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Cardiovascular Behavioral Medicine T32 Program at the University of Pittsburgh working with Drs. Rebecca Reed and Anna Marsland.

Postdoctoral Fellow

Katie Knauft

Katie_Knauft@baylor.edu

Katherine Knauft was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Biopsychosocial Health Lab and is now working at Baylor University as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Miami University. Her research explores the physiological, psychological, and social pathways connecting stressful experiences to health.

Assistant Professor

Yanping Jiang

yanping.jiang@ifh.rutgers.edu

Yanping Jiang received her Ph.D. in Health Promotion, Education, & Behavior at the University of South Carolina. Her research focuses on understanding the psychological and biological mechanisms underlying the effects of psychosocial stressors on mental and physical health. After completing her postdoc in the lab, she joined as faculty the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research at Rutgers University.

Assistant Professor

Ledina Imami

limami@oberlin.edu

Ledina Imami received her Ph.D. in Social and Personality Psychology at Wayne State. After graduating she completed a post-doc in the lab of Dr. Christopher Agnew at Purdue University. She is now an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Oberlin College.