Jessica Sperber
Doctoral Candidate
Teachers College, Columbia University
Department of Human Development
New York, USA
Twitter: @Jess_Sperber
Google Scholar
ORCID
Jessica is an F31 NRSA Predoctoral Fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University studying Developmental Psychology. She is co-mentored by Dr. Kimberly Noble and Dr. Tyler Watts. Broadly, Jessica’s research program studies the mechanisms that explain the long-term effect of early adversity on overall functioning, as well as effective interventions for disrupting those patterns. She is particularly interested in epigenetics as a potential mechanism to explain how early adversity “gets under the skin” to impact life-long trajectories.
Prior to her doctoral studies, Jessica completed her Bachelor’s in psychology at Muhlenberg College. She then held post-baccalaureate research positions at both Indiana University and New York University. Jessica’s long-term goal is to become an independent investigator examining the biological embedding of social inequality and testing ways of combatting those effects to improve children’s developmental trajectories.
Past ISDP Sandra G. Wiener Student Investigator Award Winners:
2021 
Sandra G. Wiener Student Investigator Award Winner: Mariann A. Howland, M.A. (she/her/hers), Doctoral Student | Developmental Psychopathology and Clinical Science, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, University of Minnesota Institute of Child Development
2020 Sandra G. Wiener Student Investigator Award Winner: Denise M. Werchan, Dept. of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University
2019 Sandra G. Wiener Student Investigator
Award Winner: Raha Hassan, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMasters University
2018 Sandra G. Wiener Student Investigator Award Winner: Michelle VanTieghem, Columbia University, New York, United States
2017 Sandra G. Wiener Student Investigator Award Winner: Kristie L. Poole, McMaster University