Sarah Watamura is the director of the CHaD lab. She is an Associate Professor at DU. After training with Dr. Megan Gunnar at the University of Minnesota's Institute of Child Development she received her Ph.D. from the Department of Human Development at Cornell University. She has long-standing interests in children's physiologic regulation, their development within care giving contexts, and relations between physiologic regulation and developing physical and psychological stress. She has recently expanded her work to include the unique stressors and buffers that may be important for physiologic stress among families experiencing poverty and among newcomer Mexican-origin families.
E-mail: swatamura@psy.du.edu

Irena Pikovsky is a fifth year graduate student in the developmental psychology PhD program. For her master's thesis she investigated relationships between cortisol, early environmental risk, and the 5-HTTLPR genotype in preschool age children. Currently she is looking at longitudinal relationships among these variables and health outcomes using the ALSPAC dataset. Irena is generally interested in how individual risk factors impact stress physiology in early childhood.
E-mail: ipikovsk@du.edu

Marina Mendoza worked in the lab as a project manager for 2 years. She is now a student in the DU developmental psychology PhD program.  With her research experience she hopes to continue exploring relationships between physiologic stress reactivity and care giving environments in preschool children.  Another area of interest for her is looking at physiologic stress regulation in children living in low socioeconomic environments.
E-mail: mmendoza@psy.du.edu