
My research interests have grown out of a history of studying change. After finishing an undergraduate degree in economics at Columbia University I worked as a foreign currency derivatives trader. There, I studied the movement of world markets as they went up, went down, and went sideways. My formal study of change processes continued with an MS in kinesiology at the University of Colorado, and a PhD in quantitative psychology at the University of Virginia. I specialize in longitudinal research methodology and life-span development – particularly in how within-person/intraindividual change and variability study designs can contribute to our understanding of human behavior. My goals are to develop and apply novel longitudinal methods that address fundamental questions pertaining to human development. I make use of and am extending a variety of techniques for analyzing change, with primary focus on multivariate time-series and growth curve modeling. Substantively, I apply these methods to examine changes in human behavior at multiple levels – biological, behavioral, cultural – and across multiple time scales – second-to-second, day-to-day, decade-to-decade. A key element of my research program is the explicit interplay between developmental theory, method, and data. I use the methodological innovations to challenge, extend, and demonstrate the need for greater precision in the current theoretical viewpoints, while at the same time using the theoretical viewpoints to further reconceptualize how analytical methods can be adapted and applied to the study of individual-level processes. Coupling the theory and method with data collected using mobile technologies we are contributing to a paradigm shift towards person-specific methodology and the delivery of individualized interventions/treatment. The work encompasses and integrates data collected at both ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ time-scales – the former describing long-term developmental change; the latter elucidating the behavioral and biological mechanisms that drive developmental change.