People

Alex Cohen is a licensed clinical psychologist who focuses on understanding and improving the lives of individuals with serious mental illnesses. His work focuses on adapting biobehavioral technologies, notably automated computerized analysis of natural behavior, for assessing a wide range of clinical issues, including suicidality, depression, psychosis, mania and anxiety. His work has been featured in top psychology and psychiatry scientific journals, and he has received funding at the state, federal and international levels.

For his efforts, he was recently awarded the 2016 LSU Rainmaker award for mid-career scholar. He is currently adjunct at Pennington Biomedical Research Center and LSU Health Sciences, and he maintains a team of doctoral students and undergraduate research assistants. His clinical team provides clinical services at a variety of outpatient and inpatient clinics in the greater Baton Rouge area.

Fun Fact: Alex is possibly the unluckiest, and most stubborn, of all fisherpeople in south Louisiana.

Research Interests: 

• Investigatingthe mechanisms that drive adaptation, evolutionary innovation, and phenotypic diversity using bioinformatic approaches (comparative genomics, phylogenomics, and population genomics)
• Evolutionary history and genomics of green blood in tropical lizards

Fun Fact: Zachary is a herpetologist, science communicator, and chef

Research Interests:

• Utilizing a multimodal approach (i.e., behavioral, digital, and objective measures) to investigate the cognitive and affective mechanisms underlying communication and social functioning deficits in individuals with schizophrenia.

Fun Fact: Thanh knows the lyrics to every Backstreet Boys song every written. 

Research Interests:

• Psychosocial, social cognitive, and affective aspects of psychosis, and how those are connected to lived experience
• Novel assessment methods, especially those which allow integration of information from several modalities

Fun Fact: Tovah is a polygot and world traveler.

Research Interests:

• Identity disturbance in psychosis
• Idiographic measurement of psychotic symptoms using novel methods and analyses 

Fun Fact: Expertise extends into obscure music and art (i.e., stuff you probably never heard of). 

Research Interests:

• TBD

Fun Fact: By the time Edvard completes the doctoral program, he will have lived nine years in Norway, New Zealand, and Louisana respectively.