Geraldine Cisneros is a second-year Developmental Psychology Ph.D. student at the University of Pittsburgh, where she is a recipient of both the K. Leroy Irvis Fellowship and the LRDC Director’s Fellowship. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Harvard College, with a focus on Cognitive Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology and a minor in Social Anthropology. Following her undergraduate studies, Geraldine worked as a research associate and research specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center under the mentorship of Dr. Annie Cohen, where she conducted neuropsychological and cognitive research focused on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Her present research centers on understanding how sociocultural contexts shape youth and family experiences with psychopathology, particularly in relation to recognizing and responding to internalizing symptoms and help-seeking behaviors. She is especially interested in how cultural values, family dynamics, and structural factors influence the ways in which young people and caregivers interpret and respond to psychological distress. Her work often focuses on Mexican and Mexican American communities, with attention to how cultural identity and intergenerational experiences inform both risk and resilience processes. Through a developmental psychopathology and cultural psychology lens, she aims to examine how these processes unfold across adolescence, with a particular interest in early adolescence as a critical period for shaping mental health trajectories. She is also committed to applying a public health framework to her research, with the goal of informing the development of accessible, culturally responsive interventions and prevention efforts. She is motivated by a commitment to bridging research and community needs, ensuring that mental health resources and interventions are grounded in the lived experiences of the populations they are designed to serve.
