Roger Vilardaga Viera, PhD

Roger Vilardaga Viera

Director

Roger Vilardaga Viera, PhD is an Associate Professor at the Department of Implementation Science at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, where he directs the ABHA lab. Dr. Vilardaga studied psychology at the Universitat de Barcelona in Spain and received his doctoral degree in clinical psychology from the University of Nevada, Reno. Dr. Vilardaga founded the ABHA lab to increase our knowledge base about the development, testing, and implementation of digital behavioral health interventions for populations with chronic medical needs.

Caitlyn Arnold

Caitlyn Arnold

Clinical Studies Coordinator, II

Caitlyn is a Clinical Studies Coordinator II with expertise managing IRB submissions, handling clinical trial operations, and working with the lab to meet study milestones. Caitlyn also coordinates multiple projects within the lab and supervises clinical trial operations (outreach, consent, recruitment, assessments). Caitlyn received a Bachelor’s of Arts in Psychology from the University of North Carolina of Asheville, and a Master of Arts in Psychological Science, from the University of Carolina, Wilmington. Her Master’s Thesis focused on a meta-analysis of mindfulness-based interventions and their relationship with well-being.
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Isabella Chow Kai Reyes

Clinical Research Technician

Isabella is responsible for recruiting, consenting, randomizing, and conducting study visits for several clinical studies in the ABHA Lab. Isabella received a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry and a Bachelor of Arts in Medical Anthropology from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in December 2023. During her time at UNC she was primarily involved in developmental disabilities research with Dr. Blaise Morrison, Dr. Diana Cejas, and Dr. Kelly Caravella. Isabella also served as an Outreach Co-Coordinator for the Black Student Movement at UNC-Chapel Hill where she engaged with, and supported historically marginalized communities.
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Oluwatosin Akingbule

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Oluwatosin Akingbule is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow that provides expertise on community engaged research for several ABHA Lab projects, and in particular on "Quitting Matters”, a hybrid trial to evaluate the impact and implementation of a Smoking Cessation Digital Therapeutic for Persons Living with HIV. She is a disease prevention advocate who is passionate about innovation, planning, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of evidence-based interventions in healthcare and community-based settings. Tosin obtained a doctoral degree in Community Health from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a master’s in Health Sciences (public health concentration) from Western Illinois University, and a Bachelor of Pharmacy from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria.
Meng Wei.

Claire Wei

Clinical Research Technician

Meng Wei is a Clinical Research Technician responsible for recruiting, consenting, randomizing, and conducting study visits for several clinical studies in the ABHA Lab. She earned her B.A. in Psychology and Criminal Justice from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her M.S. in Addiction Research and Clinical Health from Wake Forest School of Medicine. During her master’s program, she completed a clinical practicum in addiction counseling at Atrium Health’s trauma center, where she came to deeply appreciate the essential partnership between clinical work and research. Her hands-on experience with clinical care sparked a strong interest in the related research field, particularly in how digital tools can be utilized to support underserved populations. 

External Collaborators

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Samantha Thomas

Principal Biostatistician

Samantha is the manager of the Duke Cancer Institute (DCI) Biostatistics Shared Resource. She is also the director of the Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Research, and Design Methods (BERD) Core Training and Internship Program (BCTIP). Her professional experience involves study design, analysis, and reporting of clinical trials and observational studies. She currently collaborates with the ABHA Lab as the main statistician providing statistical and methodological guidance to monitor the "Mind to Quit" trial and other lab related projects.

Dana Rubenstein

Dana Rubenstein

Medical Student and CTSI Scholar

Dana Rubenstein is a medical student at Duke University School of Medicine completing a concurrent MHSc in Clinical Research through an NIH TL1 grant. Prior to medical school, she received BAs in Public Health and Latin American and Caribbean Studies from Brown University. Her primary research interests are tobacco regulatory science, harm reduction, and cannabis/tobacco co-use.

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Tatiana Cohab Khafif

Graduate Visiting Scholar

Tatiana is a Graduate Student from the University of São Paolo in Brazil, who was a Graduate Visiting Scholar at the ABHA Lab during the summer of 2022. Tatiana is interested in developing novel interventions for patients with Bipolar Disorder using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Upon her return to Brazil, we continued our collaboration in several projects involving the use of mixed-methods, and the study of digital interventions in bipolar patients.

Enyioha

Chineme Enyioha, MD

K23 Mentee

Dr. Chineme Enyioha completed her medical school training at Yale University and family medicine residency at the University of Virgnia in June 2017, where she was Chief Resident in her final year of training. She also completed a Masters in Public Health and a Primary Care Research Fellowship at UNC Chapel HIll, after which she joined the Department of Family Medicine as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Enyioha is currently collaborating with the ABHA Lab on an NIH K23 award funded by NIDA to develop a digital therapeutic for smoking cessation designed for African Americans.

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Charlotte Stoute

Mentee

Charlotte Stoute has a Bachelor's Degree from in Psychology from Duke University and is currently a Regulatory Coordinator at Duke's Center for Autism & Brain Development, where she manages the Duke Registry for Autism Research and coordinate many of the Center’s regulatory efforts. At the ABHA Lab, Charlotte collaborates with Dr. Vilardaga on the review of digital interventions designed and tailored for persons from Hispanic culture and descent.

Enable Lab

The ENABLE Lab at the University at Buffalo, applies an interdisciplinary approach to understanding substance use among individuals with medical and psychiatric comorbidities. The Lab focuses on three areas: (1) the mechanisms and outcomes of tobacco use among people with HIV (PWH); (2) digital interventions for smoking cessation among individuals with serious mental illness; and (3) the intersection of cannabis and opioid use for symptom management. The ABHA Lab and the ENABLE Lab have been working together over the last 4 years on the "Mind to Quit" Trial, which is comparing different approaches to treat tobacco use disorder among individuals who suffer from psychiatric disorders.

Additional External Collaborators

Joseph Francis McClernon, PhD
Paolo Mannelli, MD
Sarah Wilson, PhD
Greg Samsa, PhD
Samantha Thomas, MA
Rosa Gonzalez Guarda, PhD
Nadine Barrett, PhD
Kristie Foley, PhD
Lisa Marsch, PhD
Gary Bennett, PhD
Scott Kollins, PhD

Past Mentees/Collaborators

Anne Baker
Dr. Baker is a Research Investigator at the University of Michigan specializing in pain neuroscience and pain medicine. She holds a PhD in Social Work from the University of Utah, where she worked under the mentorship of Eric Garland. Her work focuses on the neurobiological correlates of chronic pain using simultaneous fMRI and experimental heat pain stimulation. She is also interested in the neural correlates of mindfulness-based interventions, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and their combination with psychedelic-assisted therapies. Dr. Vilardaga collaborated with Dr. Baker on a Varela grant funded by the Mind and Life Institute that aims to study the impact of a mindfulness-based intervention on spinal cord activity in chronic pain.

Madeline Gray
Madeline is a Clinical Research Technician who runs psychiatric interviews for the ABHA Lab along with recruiting, consenting, and randomizing participants for several clinical studies. Madeline graduated from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Spring of 2023. She received her Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Neuroscience, and worked in the David Penn Lab conducting research on digital interventions for early episode psychosis, as well as dissemination and open science research under the mentorship of Eric Youngstrom.

Melissa Wagner
Melissa received her Psychological Science Master of the Arts degree from UNCW in the Fall of 2019. While finishing up her Master’s degree, she worked on an Assertive Community Treatment Team (ACTT) that served individuals in the Wilmington community who were diagnosed with a severe mental illness. She then became a supervising counselor at the Women’s Community Rehabilitation Center in Baton Rouge who served women diagnosed with a severe mental illness. As a Clinical Studies Coordinator she has expertise conducting direct clinical trial operations (outreach, consent, recruitment, assessments) as well as other duties involved in remote smoking cessation trials for individuals with psychiatric illness and tobacco use disorder. She currently coordinates the Mind to Quit Trial at Duke University, Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the University at Buffalo.