Lab Team

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Wayne State Members

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Liyah Marshall is our lab’s most senior student. She graduated from Grand Valley State University with a bachelor’s in behavioral neuroscience in 2018 and is a Detroit native! This year, she will be completing her internship at St. Peter’s Regional Treatment Center in Minnesota while also finishing up her dissertation: “Partner Experiences of Chronic Pain.” Her interests are mainly centered around Serious Mental Illness, and her career goal is to become a forensic psychologist who provides both treatment and evaluations for the state of Michigan. Liyah also finds great passion in training and mentoring others and hopes that she can continue to pursue these activities throughout her career.

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Matthew B. Jennings is a clinical/community psychology doctoral candidate with a research interest in somatic conditions as they relate to psychological distress. As an 11-year U.S. Army combat veteran, Matthew also has clinical and research interests in veteran issues such as health and access to earned benefits. Matthew earned his undergraduate psychology degree in his home state of Washington at Saint Martin’s University and Abbey (O.S.B.) and his Master’s degree in psychology (clinical track) through Wayne State University’s Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program. Matthew currently works in both Dr. Paul Toro’s lab and Dr. Lumley’s lab, and with several research groups throughout the country, including the Henry Ford Hospital, the Medical University of South Carolina, and Rush University, researching insomnia, cancer, and chronic pain, respectively. His doctoral dissertation (under Dr. Toro) focuses on mental and physical health outcomes of cohorts of homeless individuals in Detroit, MI, from the 1990s to 2022. Matthew has career aspirations to work as a clinical health psychologist at a V.A. hospital facility to treat, research, and advocate for military veterans.

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Marjorie “Marisa” Heule is a third-year doctoral student investigating trauma, emotions, and physical symptoms. Marisa completed her bachelor’s degree in Political Science, French and Spanish at Calvin University. She has a Master’s in Clinical Research Methods from Fordham University. While completing her Master’s, Marisa worked at Columbia Irving Medical Center assisting on research studies investigating the neurodevelopmental correlates of chronic pain, such as attachment. She is currently working with Dr. Lumley on projects investigating sexual abuse and women’s sexual functioning, anger expression and chronic pain, and perfectionism in chronic pain patients. She hopes to further research on physical symptoms by investigating psychological contributors to Long Covid. Marisa enjoys spending time with her husband and her dog. She especially loves trying new foods and going for walks around Belle Isle (probably while talking on the phone with one of her four sisters).

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Sabrina Blank is a clinical psychology doctoral student with a concentration in health psychology. She graduated from Hope College in 2022 with a major in psychology and a minor in neuroscience. Sabrina started working with Dr. Lumley at Wayne State in August 2022. Her research interests include the relationship between emotion and physiological functioning, with particular interests in gastrointestinal health and pain. In the future, she hopes to work with children and adolescents in a medical hospital setting and continue conducting research.

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Jacob Blank is a first-year clinical psychology doctoral student working with Dr. Mark Lumley. In 2021, he graduated with a B.A. in Psychology from Temple University, where he also worked as a research assistant and intake coordinator at the Child & Adolescent Anxiety Disorders Clinic. Jacob then spent 2 years as a research assistant at McLean Hospital’s Center for Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Research. There, he coordinated an NIMH-funded study examining the relationships among acute and chronic stress, decision-making, and brain structure/function in adult depression. He is currently interested in studying patient and therapist factors that may influence psychotherapy outcomes for those with primary pain disorders.

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Britney R. Abro is currently a study coordinator for an NIH-funded (RO1) study on behavioral treatments for chronic neck and back pain, while working with PI Dr. Mark Lumley and PI Dr. John Burns from Rush University in Chicago. Britney graduated from Wayne State University in 2023 with a B.S. in Psychology, a co-major in University Honors, and a minor in Biological Sciences. Her research interests lie within psychological and health interventions to optimize brain health, contributing to better overall wellbeing. She plans on applying to Ph.D. programs in clinical psychology to initiate her career. Britney has many aspirations within her vocation, including becoming a licensed psychologist who conducts clinical therapy while analyzing brain scans and implementing holistic changes to improve lifestyle. She would also like to spread awareness of her work to the general public through podcasts, books, and having an overall media presence.

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NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIONS

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Lauren Krulis grew up in Melbourne, Australia, and came to New York to pursue graduate studies in psychology. She is in her 5th year of the Clinical Psychology PhD Program at the New School for Social Research and will be beginning her internship in the fall of 2023 at The New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (NYPSI). Her clinical placements reflect her research interests in chronic pain and have included working with PTSD patients with chronic pain at the Brooklyn VA, and with severe mental illness and chronic pain at NCB Hospital. Additionally, she is a licensed physical therapist in NYC, and she has maintained a small private physical therapy practice treating patients with chronic pain throughout her time in graduate school. The integration of clinical and empirical work is important to Lauren, and she is committed to contributing to the literature to aid in providing relief and support to those that suffer with chronic pain. She has been a member of the Global Mental Health Lab at The New School, where they focus on ways to improve access to treatment through brief, scalable, and accessible mental health interventions. For her doctoral dissertation, Lauren is conducting a randomized trial to investigate the effects of an online pain neuroscience education and emotional processing intervention on pain-related outcomes in people with musculoskeletal pain. Dr. Mark Lumley has been mentoring and advising her throughout her dissertation and is a member of her dissertation committee.

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Valentina Barrios is a master’s-level clinical psychologist who has been in clinical practice for several years in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She also coordinates a special interest group focused on chronic primary pain in the Argentine Association for the Study of Pain, which is a chapter of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP). In addition to her clinical work, Valentina is on the teaching faculty at the University of Buenos Aires, and she has recently begun a PhD program there. The research team that she is collaborating with is studying maladaptive perfectionism, and her PhD research is on the association between PTSD and chronic primary pain. Dr. Mark Lumley of Wayne State is one of the directors of her doctoral research. Valentina aspires to continue doing research about chronic pain and trauma and to teach psychologists evidence-based approaches for chronic primary pain. She is passionate about helping people who suffer from chronic pain and believes that a combination of clinical care and research is essential to improving the lives of those affected by this condition.