Faculty

Dr. Donohue (Meghan Rose) is a clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry.  She completed her undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Georgia State University and her clinical internship/residency at Northwestern University (Lurie Children’s Hospital).  Dr. Donohue’s research focuses on the development of moral emotions (empathy, guilt) and prosocial behaviors in early childhood, and how disruptions in these emotions and behaviors contribute to the development of psychopathology.  She uses in vivo observational paradigms, parent-child interactions and EEG/ERP techniques in her research.

Carina Fowler is a clinical psychologist and post-doctoral researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Fowler completed her PhD in 2025 at Duke University and her Clinical Internship/Residency at Children's Mercy Hospital-Kansas City. Her research focuses on how stress impacts the developing mind and brain, with an emphasis on how exposure to contaminants and pollutants may act as a form of stress on development. Dr. Fowler's research uses MRI, questionnaire, and observational methods.

Kirsten Gilbert is a licensed clinical psychologist. She completed her undergraduate at Stanford University, her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Yale University, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University and Washington University School of Medicine. Dr. Gilbert’s research examines how ‘too much self-control,’ in the form of heightened performance monitoring and ‘overcontrol’ develop in young children. She is interested in understanding when overcontrol may be adaptive or may contribute to psychopathology, (e.g., anxiety) in young children and adolescents. Kirsten also studies the development of reward processing/positive emotional functioning in young children exhibiting overcontrolled tendencies. Kirsten uses behavioral, EEG/ERP techniques, and parent-child observational data in her research.

Laura Hennefield is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine.   She completed her Ph.D. in Psychology at Washington University in St Louis in 2015. Dr. Hennefield’s research focuses on knowledge acquisition in preschool-aged children, with an emphasis on social and cognitive constraints that affect the learning process. Her current projects focus on the development of optimism in preschoolers, including how optimism affects how children learn from and about the world around them, and how a lack of optimism may contribute to psychopathology in early childhood.

Dr. Hoyniak is a clinical psychologist and Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine. She completed her Ph.D. at Indiana University and her clinical internship/residency at Western Psychiatric Hospital at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Dr. Hoyniak’s research focuses on the development of sleep problems in early childhood, exploring how early sleep problems contribute to later risk for both internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. She uses a combination of psychophysiological (e.g., actigraphy, EEG/ERP) and observational (both in-lab and in-home) data collection in her research.

Charlie Huntington is a post-doctoral research scholar in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine and is co-mentored by Diana Whalen, Ph.D., and Kirsten Gilbert, Ph.D. He received his undergraduate degree in English literature and linguistics at Swarthmore College and completed an M.A. in clinical psychology and a Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Denver. Dr. Huntington conducts research on sexual health and interpersonal skills across developmental periods; he is particularly interested in how studying psychopathology assessed across childhood and adolescence may predict interpersonal functioning and sexual health in emerging adults. Dr. Huntington draws on neuroimaging, observational, and survey data in his research.

Dr. Luking is an assistant professor of psychology at Saint Louis University. She completed a B.S. in psychobiology and financial economics at Centre College in 2008 and her Ph.D. in neuroscience at Washington University in 2015. Professor Luking’s work focuses on relationships between neurodevelopment and the emergence of psychopathology in middle childhood and early adolescence. Using a variety of methods (EEG, fMRI, behavior, hormones) she asks how core affective and cognitive processes, including emotion reactivity/regulation, response to social feedback, and reward processing, change in early puberty and mechanistically contribute to the emergence of depression and borderline personality disorder.

Rebecca Schwarzlose is a cognitive neuroscientist at the Washington University School of Medicine. She received a BA in Psychology from Northwestern University and a PhD in Neuroscience from MIT. Since graduation, she has served as the editor of Trends in Cognitive Sciences, written a trade book called Brainscapes about neural organization, and carried out postdoctoral research on topics related to mental health and child development. Her current research investigates the neural bases for atypical sensory processing and prediction in childhood and their relations to psychopathology.