Project Coordinators

Zia Bajwa | Project Coordinator

Contact: ziabajwa@berkeley.edu

Zia Bajwa is a Project Coordinator with the Golden Bear Sleep & Mood Research Clinic. Working primarily on the National Institute of Aging (NIA) study, her responsibilities include clinical assessment, data management, study coordination, recruitment, and supervision of undergraduate research assistants. Zia graduated from UC Berkeley in 2023 with a B.A. in Cognitive Science. During her undergraduate years, she researched the neural and inflammatory correlates of adolescent depression as a research assistant in the Stanford Neurodevelopment, Affect, & Psychopathology (SNAP) Lab and the UCSF Cognition, Affect, and Neurodevelopment in Youth (CANDY) Lab. She joined the Golden Bear Sleep & Mood Research Clinic in 2021 as a research assistant, where she wrote her honors thesis on the implementation outcomes of TranS-C for treating severe mental illness in community mental health centers. Before returning as a project coordinator, Zia spent a year as a research assistant at Columbia University studying adolescent depression and suicidality in the Translational Research on Affective Disorders and Suicide Lab with Dr. Randy Auerbach. In the future, Zia hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, and her research interests include treatment development, implementation science, adolescent mental health, and severe mental illness. In her free time, Zia enjoys running, reading, and traveling.

Ashby Cogan | Project Coordinator

Contact: acogan@berkeley.edu

Ashby Cogan is a Project Coordinator with the Golden Bear Sleep and Mood Research Clinic. Ashby works primarily on the National Institute of Aging (NIA) Study, supporting personnel training and operations, conducting assessments, and supporting participants through the research study. Before coming to the GBSMRC Ashby’s first experience in the science of behavior change was through the lens of applied behavior analysis in work with non-human learners. After this spurred post-baccalaureate studies at UC Berkeley, Ashby worked with Dr. Ann Kring as a site coordinator on an R01 study examining lifelong health outcomes in a 1950s birth cohort and administered multimodal assessments including fMRI. Ashby’s research interests include treatment development and implementation, particularly, how to help clinicians and clients get the most out of their treatment sessions and how to help learning from treatment transfer to the rest of life. A trained mezzo-soprano, Ashby enjoys opera, hiking, and shaping behavior by successive approximation in dog sports.

Yimei Jiang | Project Coordinator

Contact: yimei@berkeley.edu

Yimei is a Project Coordinator with the Golden Bear Sleep and Mood Research Clinic. She works on the National Institute of Aging (NIA) study, and her primary responsibilities are twofold: 1) study coordination, recruitment, supporting clients and study personnel to facilitate study progress, and 2) data coding, training undergraduate research assistants, and providing support to therapists on study measures. Yimei graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2023 with a BS in Psychology, Actuarial Science, and a minor in Statistics. During her undergraduate, Yimei worked under the guidance of Dr. Jessie Chin to research people’s decision-making processes and learning behaviors. Yimei’s research interests include mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and treatment development. Outside of research, she enjoys dancing, cooking, and photography.

Sophia Oliver | Project Coordinator

Contact: smoliver@berkeley.edu

Sophia (she/her) is a Project Coordinator and Sleep Therapist with the Golden Bear Sleep and Mood Research Clinic. She graduated summa cum laude from UC Davis with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Public Health Sciences. Sophia began as a Research Assistant for Dr. Allison Harvey in June 2021 working on projects involving memory support strategies, habit formation, and implementation and dissemination science. Throughout undergraduate, she participated in translational neuroscience research at UC Davis, and completed her honors thesis under the guidance of Dr. Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz examining how sleep quality may impact posttraumatic stress symptoms in those who have been exposed to community and gun violence. Her responsibilities within the Golden Bear Sleep and Mood Research Clinic include clinical assessments and treatment, recruitment, phone screening, scheduling, data acquisition, and training of undergraduate research assistants. Sophia’s research interests include transdiagnostic treatment development, violence exposure, and the effects of sleep quality on mental health outcomes. She will be applying to Clinical Psychology Ph.D.‘s in 2024.

Nena Salazar | Project Coordinator

Contact: n.salazar@berkeley.edu

Nena Salazar is a Clinical Project Coordinator and Sleep Therapist in the Golden Bear Sleep and Mood Research Clinic. She previously attended the UC Berkeley post-baccalaureate certificate program, where she conducted research as part of a treatment development team in the areas of treatment dissemination, implementation, habit formation, and transdiagnostic approaches to mental health. She completed her B.A. in psychology at Naropa University, where she trained extensively in mindfulness and compassion practices in conjunction with Eastern and Western psychology studies. She has worked in the Harvey lab since January of 2021 and now oversees the day-to-day operations of our large-scale habit formation study focusing on sleep and circadian functioning in young adults. Nena hopes to pursue a PhD in clinical psychology. Her research interests include treatment development, dissemination, and implementation; habit formation, mindfulness, trauma, psychosis, and transdiagnostic approaches to mental health and disorder.

Crystal Woo | Project Coordinator

Contact: crystalw@berkeley.edu

Crystal is a Project Coordinator with the Golden Bear Sleep and Mood Research Clinic. She graduated from UCLA in 2023 with a Cognitive Science B.S. and a Food Studies minor. She began as a research assistant in the Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab. During this time, she worked on various projects and participated in different steps of the research process. Her responsibilities within the Golden Bear Sleep and Mood Research Clinic include scheduling, phone screening, administering assessments, and study coordination.