LAB DIRECTORS
J. DAVID CRESWELL, PH.D.
Principal Investigator
William S. Dietrich II Professor in Psychology
Areas of Specialization: Health Psychology, Psychoneuroimmunology, Social Neuroscience, Positive Psychology, Social Cognition, Social Psychology, and Clinical Psychology
Interests: Self-regulation, stress and coping, mind-body relationships, behavioral interventions, meditation, research methods, the science of consciousness, and performance enhancement
David’s research focuses broadly on understanding what makes people resilient under stress. Specifically, he conducts community intervention studies, laboratory studies of stress and coping, and neuroimaging studies to understand how various stress management strategies alter coping and stress resilience. For example, he is currently working on studies that test how mindfulness meditation training impacts the brain, peripheral stress physiological responses, and stress-related disease outcomes in at-risk community samples (click here for a mini-review paper of this work). ). Much of this recent work on mindfulness meditation training focuses on the important role of learning acceptance and equanimity skills for stress reduction and health. David also explores how the use of simple strategies (self-affirmation, rewarding activities, cognitive reappraisal) can buffer stress and improve problem-solving under pressure.
David has made some recent research forays into other areas, such as developing new experience sampling research on mental health and resilience among college students, describing the role of unconscious processes in learning and decision making, developing new theory and research on behavioral priming, and helping build a new field of health neuroscience.
Contact David: creswell@cmu.edu
David’s work has been published in general science, health psychology, social psychology, neuroscience, and medical journals. He was recognized in 2011 as a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science, and in 2014 received the American Psychological Association Early Career Award, and in 2017 he received the Herbert Weiner Early Career Award from the American Psychosomatic Society for his scientific contributions.
JANINE M. DUTCHER, PH.D.
Lab Director
Assistant Research Professor
Areas of Specialization: Social and Health Neurosciecne, Social Psychology, Behavioral Intervention, Psycho-oncology
Janine is additionally the Co-Director of the CMU-Pitt BRUDGE Center, a state-of-the-art research-dedicated neuroimaging facility.
Interests: Janine’s research seeks to understand the neurobiological mechanisms of stress
reduction interventions. She uses multiple methods, including functional and structural
neuroimaging, psychoneuroimmunology, and ecological momentary assessment to explore how these processes have effects on physical health and well-being. She also conducts translational work that investigates the role these stress reduction interventions play in improving mental and physical health among clinical and at-risk groups, including patients with cancer, young adults at risk of depression, and lonely individuals.
Janine’s work has been published in neuroscience, social psychology, health psychology and
psychoneuroimmunology journals. She has received grant funding from the National Cancer
Institute (R01) and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (L30 and
K01). Janine has received the Young Investigator Colloquium Award and MacLean Scholar
Award from the American Psychosomatic Society. Janine completed her PhD at UCLA in Social Psychology in 2016, and her BS in Psychology at Carnegie Mellon in 2010.
Contact Janine: jdutcher@andrew.cmu.edu
KIRK WARREN BROWN, PH.D.
Quantitative Psychologist
Special Faculty Researcher
Interests: Kirk Warren Brown is a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and is affiliate faculty in Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. His research centers on the importance of awareness of internal states and behavior to healthy human functioning, with a particular interest in the nature of mindfulness and the value of mindfulness training to enhance emotion regulation, behavior regulation, and well-being.
He has authored numerous scholarly articles on these topics and published the Handbook of
Mindfulness: Theory, Research, and Practice (2015) and the Oxford Handbook of Hypo-egoic
Phenomena (2016). His work has been featured in a range of national and international media
outlets. Dr. Brown is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for
Social and Personality Psychology, and the American Psychological Association. He also
teaches the evidence-based Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program.
Kirk's Email: kwbrown@andrew.cmu.edu