Melissa R Schick, PhD

Melissa R. Schick, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and the Director of the Study of Trauma, Addiction, and Recovery (STAR) Lab. Dr. Schick’s research focuses on understanding mechanistic processes influencing the development, course, maintenance, remission, and prevention of substance use among trauma-exposed individuals. Her work includes a specific focus on the use of experience sampling methodologies to examine factors that occur proximally to substance use, with the goal of ultimately informing the development and implementation of just-in-time substance use-focused interventions. She is further interested in exploring health disparities and inequities related to substance use and is dedicated to conducting work focused on marginalized populations to better understand how such inequities might be considered in substance use treatment and research. Dr. Schick is currently funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse to focus on the use of ambulatory assessment (experience sampling in conjunction with biosensing) to predict substance use risk among trauma-exposed community adults. Fellows within the STAR Lab would have the opportunity to receive training in these areas, as well as access to several datasets focused at the intersection of substance use and trauma for secondary analyses and support to carry out evidence synthesis projects (e.g., systematic reviews and meta-analyses).