Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior

Celina McDowell completed her B.S. in psychology at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Following graduation, she worked as a research assistant with Dr. Vincent Filoteo and Dr. Dawn Schiehser at the VA San Diego, studying neuropsychiatric changes in Parkinson’s disease. She joined the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program at Boston University in 2019, under co-mentorship of Dr. Alice Cronin-Golomb (Boston University) and Dr. Yakeel Quiroz (Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School), to research risk and protective factors of cognitive decline, including purpose in life, loneliness, and sleep. She completed a T32 predoctoral fellowship with the Division of Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School (preceptor: Dr. Jeanne Duffy) examining associations among sleep, circadian rhythms, and cognitive functioning in older adults, and was subsequently awarded a National Research Service Award (F31) from the National Institute on Aging to support this work as part of her doctoral dissertation. She is currently completing her clinical psychology pre-doctoral internship within the Neuropsychology Track at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, working with Drs. Jennifer Davis and Seth Margolis to better understand anxiety in early Parkinson’s disease. Following graduation, she will begin her postdoctoral fellowship at the UCSD School of Medicine with co-investigators Dr. Sarah Banks and Dr. Erin Sundermann. She extends heartfelt gratitude to her mentors, family, and husband Ryan for their unwavering support of her goals. She is proud to be a first-generation college graduate and thrilled to be the first person in her family to earn a doctorate.