Postdoctoral Fellow

Vacancy : PDS
004698

The UNC School of Education houses a world‑class collaborative research faculty, numerous post‑doctoral fellows and research scientists; and strong school partnership and outreach networks through alumni, and three regional school consortia (20 school districts). The School is a leader in integrating behavioral health considerations into K‑12 public school training, practice, and research, aiming to solve pressing problems, through innovation, and by asking and answering tough questions, towards maximizing the potential of every learner.

The UNC Department of Psychiatry has over 150 faculty members who are among the nation’s leaders in exploring the mechanisms that will ultimately explain human behavior and mental illness. The department is a collaborative, multidisciplinary team with faculty members from a variety of backgrounds including psychiatry, psychology, epidemiology, education, obstetrics and gynecology, health services delivery, social work, nursing, genetics, and nutrition.

The duration of the fellowship is 1 year with possibility to extend to a second‑year contingent upon satisfactory progress.

Research will involve several ongoing projects, with examples including:

• Co‑Designing a Virtual Reality Intervention to Enhance Skill Development with Adolescents Hospitalized for Suicide‑Related Crises. Funded by an MQ Fellows Award (MQF
  22 6; PI Marraccini), this project is co‑designing aspects of virtual reality experience with teens identifying as ethnic‑racial minoritized and/or LGBTQ+ with lived suicide‑related experience and pilot testing a virtual reality intervention with adolescents hospitalized for suicide‑related crises.
• Exploring Mental Health and Downstream Outcomes for Black Boys. Funded by Walton Family Foundation (PI: Lindsay), this project explores the intersection of school‑related discipline, mental health and suicide‑related outcomes among Black youth.
• Participatory Social Network Analysis to Examine Social Connections and Identify Peer Leaders to Prevent Suicide in School‑Aged Children. Funded by Humana Foundation (PI: Lanier), this project explores implementation strategies for an evidence‑based upstream suicide prevention program in schools.

The postdoctoral fellow will work with the supervisors to oversee implementation of several investigations occurring in hospital and school settings. This will involve overseeing research assistant recruitment and follow‑up procedures and conducting clinical interviews, as well as intervention delivery.

In addition to experiences included in coordination of the primary research project, the experience will consist of promoting development of the fellow's independent program of research (subsumed under grant writing and manuscript preparation described below). The nature of this independent research program will be collaboratively determined by the fellow and supervisor(s) and will involve the production of a traditional scientific product (e.g., manuscript, presentation at a national professional meeting, grant application, instrument development);

the independent program of research may involve new directions taken using resources (i.e., data, research population, etc) provided by the mentorship team and/or may involve continued development of the trainee's prior work (i.e., publication of dissertation).

The fellow will be exposed to various aspects of research via participation in the following supportive research…