Lauren Philbrook

Lauren Philbrook came to Penn State in 2009 after completing a bachelor of arts degree in psychology with a neuroscience concentration from Williams College. At Williams, Lauren worked on her thesis advisor Amie Hane's Project BABEE, studying how early caregiving shapes infant physiological development. This experience sparked her interest in examining environmental influences on child physiological and adjustment outcomes. At Penn State she worked on both her advisor Doug's Teti's Project SIESTA and mentor Kristin Buss's TIKES study. Her graduate research used data from their projects to examine the bidirectional, longitudinal associations between parenting and child sleep and cortisol regulation, in addition to the joint influences of child sleep and autonomic activity on externalizing and internalizing behavior. She graduated from Penn State in 2015 with a doctoral degree in human development and family studies (HDFS). From 2015-2017 she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the HDFS department at Auburn University under the guidance of Mona El-Sheikh. At Auburn, her research focus broadened toward examining the interplay between broader sociocultural context, child regulation, and developmental outcomes, such as how differences in sleep quality may contribute to racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in health or achievement. During the 2017-2018 school year she returned to Williams to complete a one-year position as a visiting assistant professor of psychology. She will begin working as an assistant professor in the Psychological and Brain Sciences department at Colgate University in the fall of 2018. She is excited to develop her research program further while working closely with undergraduate students.

Lauren is incredibly grateful for the opportunity to work on multiple interdisciplinary research projects within the HDFS program and Child Study Center at Penn State, and for the rigorous statistical methodology training and strong mentorship she received.