PI

Kathleen Gates (Katie)                                                                                    Email: gateskm@email.unc.edu
Katie is an associate professor of Quantitative Psychology  in the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a member of the Human Neuroimaging Group  and affiliated faculty of the UNC Biomedical Research Imaging Center (BRIC). She obtained her Ph.D. in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (quant focus) at Penn State, a Masters of Forensic Psychology at the City University of New York (John Jay College), and a BS in Psychology from Michigan State University. Katie’s work is motivated by problems in analyzing individual-level data. She develops algorithms and programs that may aid researchers in better quantifying behavioral, psychophysiological, and emotional processes across time.  The end goal is to help researchers identify patterns within individuals so we can provide person-specific prevention, treatment, and intervention protocols as well as better understand the varied basic physiological underpinnings for emotions, cognition, and behaviors.

Katie and colleagues Sy-Miin Chow and Peter Molenaar wrote a book on conducting analyses of intensive longitudinal data. The motivation for writing the book was that the currently available texts on time series analyses were not always accessible. The book has an online supplement that provides freely available lectures and code (with data).

Current Graduate Students

Lan Luo

Lan is a 5th year Ph.D. student in Quantitative Psychology. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a B.A. in Psychology and Economics with a minor in Japanese. Lan is broadly interested in the development of methods for psychophysiological data.

Chaewon Lee

Chaewon is a 4th year Ph.D student in Quantitative Psychology. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a M.S in Applied Statistics. Prior to this, she graduated from Yonsei University in South Korea with a M.A in Economics and a B.S in Biology. She is mainly interested in the development of prediction modeling for psychopathology with the application of machine learning and time series analysis.

Bing Cai Kok

Former Postdoctoral Fellows

Jessica Girault

Jessica completed her PhD in Neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill in 2018 and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow supported by the T32 Program at the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities. Jessica’s research is focused on identifying the neurobiological mechanisms that shape individual differences in cognition and behavior during early childhood. During her postdoc, Jessica plans to investigate how deriving neurobiologically-based subgroups using functional MRI data can help parse the heterogeneity in cognitive and behavioral profiles in infants and toddlers at familial high risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Such an approach has the potential to identify distinct brain phenotypes that are more closely associated with underlying biological mechanisms than current conceptualizations of ASD, which will allow for the development of targeted, individualized treatments and interventions.

Former Graduate Students

Sandra (Williams) Lee     

Sandra Lee graduated from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 2023.  She obtained an SM in public health from Harvard School of Public Health and a BA in Psychology from Wellesley College.  Prior to pursuing her PhD, she worked in various public health data analyst roles conducting applied research aimed at informing public health policy, practice, and intervention evaluations.  Her research interest is in longitudinal methods for studying within-person processes and within-person change that may aid practitioners in developing and implementing personalized prevention, treatment, and intervention regimens.

Sandra works as a statistical consultant at the Odum Institute.

Cara Arizmendi

Cara completed her Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology in 2021.  She earned her B.A. in Psychology and Women’s Studies from UNC, graduating with honors in 2012.  Cara’s research focuses on modeling within-person dynamic processes and finding solutions to measurement problems in experience sampling data.

Cara works on oncology clinical trials in the measurement science team at AstraZeneca.

Zachary Fisher                   

Zack completed his Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology at UNC in 2020.

He is now tenure-track faculty at The Pennsylvania State University.

Stephanie Lane

Stephanie completed her Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017. She graduated with a B.A. in Psychology from UNC in 2011. Her research broadly focuses on the development and evaluation of methods for intensive longitudinal data, with particular applications to psychophysiological data (startle response & functional MRI).

Stephanie is a manager of Data Science and Engineering at Netflix.

Teague Henry

Teague graduated from the University of Washington in 2012 with a B.S. in Psychology, minoring in math. He graduated with a Masters in Statistics and Operations Research and a Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology program at UNC in 2017. He is interested in methods to analyze complex networks with unobserved covariates, and focuses his research on methods for neuroimaging data.  He is substantively interested in heterogeneity in clinical disorders, such as autism and ADHD, as well as peer influences on alcohol and drug use.

Teague is currently tenure-track faculty at the University of Virginia.

Former Research Assistants

Kelly Duffy 

Kelly Duffy was a post-baccalaureate research assistant with the Gates Lab, focusing on fMRI data analysis methodology. She earned a B.S. in Psychology and a B.A. in Biology with a minor in neuroscience from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Kelly is interested in network connectivity and imaging methodology and analysis, and plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, reading, and traveling. Kelly is also currently working in the Cohen Lab in the Cognitive Psychology department at UNC.

Hallie Pike

Hallie was a Psychology major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a minor in History. She is broadly interested in longitudinal methods for developmental research.

Lab Pics from Prior Times

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