The Biobehavioral Mechanisms Explaining Disparities Lab at Rice University is seeking student research assistants (undergrad, grad, post-bac, etc.) for a study funded by The National Institutes of Health.
The purpose of our study is to find out more about what predicts and contributes to the mental and physical health of individuals who are caregivers of a spouse with dementia. The long-term goal of this work is to make informed future interventions that can help improve caregivers’ quality of life.
Working within psychoneuroimmunology, the BMED lab uses theories and methods from clinical, social, and developmental health psychology to examine how stress “gets under the skin” to impact diseases of older adulthood, such as cardiovascular disease, some cancers, and cognitive decline. We are also interested in how the immune system regulates neuronal function to influence mood and health behaviors. Our theoretical work has focused on adopting attachment theory to understand how attachment security can buffer the negative consequences of current and past life stressors. We also develop theoretically based interventions to improve stress’s adverse physical health consequences.
We can potentially offer recommendation letters, 1:1 exposure to running human subjects in a research setting (patient contact hours), course credit, work-study, potential for academic mentorship as a senior member of the lab, phlebotomy training and certification, research poster presentations, and authorship opportunities.
Interested students should complete the attached lab application and send it to Patty Morales (pm22@rice.edu) along with an updated resume/CV. Please scan the QR code to receive a copy of the application, or you can find it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1whZPs1w72Y1O861Wr7-mPwdvlBC2203s/copy
Undergraduate & Post-Bach Student Success Stories
Andrea Lugo – Undergraduate student, Andrea Lugo, presented a poster at the Society of Behavioral Medicine Conference, 2017. She is now a medical student at McGovern Medical School in Houston, TX. Well done, Andrea!
Allison Shields is pictured here in front of her poster at the American Psychological Association Conference in 2016. She is now a doctoral student at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Congratulations, Allison!
Summer undergraduate student, Daisy Alvarado (pictured above), won the Outstanding Poster Award during her research internship at Rice in 2017.
Rice undergraduates, Amani Ramiz and Pearly Ye, presented a poster at Rice University’s undergraduate poster symposium in Spring 2017.