Principal Investigator & Professor/ Department of Health Education & Behavior/ College Health & Human Performance.
A clinical psychologist with public health expertise, Dr. Tucker has over 40 years of extramurally funded research guided by behavioral economics on harmful substance use and related risk behaviors, including HIV/AIDS, using community and treatment populations, with awards from NIAAA, NIDA, CDC, and SAMSHA/CSAT. Recent projects aim to inform risk reduction strategies with disadvantaged emerging adults and problem drinkers attempting natural recovery without treatment. Dr. Tucker has contributed to 4 books, including Dynamic Pathways to Recovery from Alcohol Use Disorder: Meaning and Methods (Tucker & Witkiewitz, 2022; https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108976213), and over 150 journal articles and book chapters. Notable recognitions include the Division Medal of Honor for exceptional and sustained service to Division 50 – Addiction, 1993-2012, the 2015 Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Clinical Psychology award from Division 12 (APA Society of Clinical Psychology) and the 2018 Betty Ford award from the Association for Medical Education and Research on Substance Abuse. In 2023, she was named the Mary F. Lane Endowed Professor in the College of Health and Human Performance.
email: jaliet@ufl.edu Tel: (352)-294-1812
Co-Investigator/ Associate Professor/ Department of Health Education & Behavior/ College of Health & Human Performance.
Dr. JeeWon Cheong is a quantitative social psychologist and senior methodologist on the UF Horizons Study. She has two lines of research: (1) methodological research in mediation analysis, and (2) research in substance use and related risk behaviors among adolescents and adults.
An expert on mediation analysis and longitudinal modeling, she has published multiple peer-reviewed journal articles and handbook chapters on methods for testing mediation, with a focus on longitudinal mediation. Her substantive research focuses on risk and protective factors of substance use and related risk behaviors, as they can be targeted to modify in prevention/intervention settings and explain underlying mechanisms of how programs work. She has been a lead methodologist on multiple NIH and CDC grants; worked with large-scale longitudinal prevention studies for children and adolescents; and investigated the role of social environmental factors, particularly parents and peers, in shaping the developmental course of adolescent substance use.
email: jwcheong@ufl.edu Tel:(352)-294-1811
Co-Investigator/ Director, UF Bureau of Economic and Business Research/ Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Dr. McCarty is widely recognized in the field of social network analysis as an expert in the application of personal network analysis to a broad range of topics, including substance abuse and addiction. He has worked on the adaptation of traditional network methods to large-scale telephone and field surveys and the estimation of hard-to-count populations, such as the homeless and those who are HIV positive. His most recent work is in the area of the professional researcher networks, using publication co-authorship and grant co-awardee data as well topic models to describe and analyze researcher networks. He developed a widely used program called EgoNet for the collection and analysis of personal network data.
email: ufchris@ufl.edu Tel: (352)-392-0171
Co-Investigator/ Assistant Professor/ Department of Health Education & Behavior/ College of Health & Human Performance.
Dr. Nichole Scaglione is the director of HEB’s Sexual Assault and Alcohol Prevention Research (SAPR) Lab, where her team studies the risk and protective factors that affect substance misuse and sexual assault risk in adolescents and young adults.
Her research is grounded in theories of behavior change, with specific focus on both planned (i.e., intentional) and reactive (i.e., socially driven) decision-making processes associated with increased risk or the prevention of negative outcomes. She uses findings from her etiological research to inform the design and evaluation of innovative interventions to prevent substance use/misuse and sexual assault victimization, revictimization, and perpetration. She was selected as one of 10 Excellence Awardees for Assistant Professors at the University of Florida in 2022.
Research Coordinator III/ Department of Health Education & Behavior/ College of Health & Human Performance.
Manju Karki, a native of Nepal, holds an MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She has been working at the University of Florida for over a decade in different departments managing different health research projects. Prior to working at UF, Manju worked on a wide array of public health projects in settings including academic institutions, non-profit organizations, and United Nation Organizations in different countries. Manju’s past research experiences have been in substance use, harm reduction, HIV/AIDS, women’s health, and Florida Medicaid. Manju is passionate about community health projects. Her primary role is to lead and manage the NIAAA research project Digital Motivational Behavioral Economic Intervention to Reduce Risky Drinking Among Community-Dwelling Emerging Adults and provide support for the Center for Behavioral Economic Health Research (CBEHR) activities.
email: karkim@ufl.edu Tel: (352-294-1068)
Associate Researcher/ Department of Health Education & Behavior/ College of Health & Human Performance.
Dr. Lesleigh Stinson’s research interests lie in alcohol misuse, excessive social media use, and behavioral economic-informed analyses and treatment methods. Trained as a behavior analyst, she is also interested in quantitative models of choice behavior. Dr. Stinson’s recent dissertation involving a novel application of contingency management to reduce excessive social media use received several awards, including the BF Skinner Student Research Award. As a Post-doctoral Associate with the CBEHR, she is currently working on research that is focused on behavioral economic treatments for and analyses of alcohol misuse.
email: lcraddock@ufl.edu Tel: (352)-294-1617
Associate Researcher/ Department of Health Education & Behavior/ College of Health & Human Performance.
Dr. Van Heukelom received his doctoral degree in Psychology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington under the primary mentorship of Dr. Raymond Pitts.
His research examines behavior-analytic approaches to understanding and treating substance misuse using both human and nonhuman translational research approaches.
As a current postdoctoral associate at CBEHR, Dr. Van Heukelom is investigating alcohol misuse and its treatment among community-dwelling emerging adults.
