Sunhye Bai, PhD, MPH

Sunhye Bai, PhD, MPH, is a Visiting Assistant Project Scientist at UCLA and an Assistant Professor at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Bai completed an NIMH T32 Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the UCLA Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. She received her MPH degree from UC Berkeley in 2010, specializing in Maternal and Child Health, and received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from UCLA in 2017, where she also completed her pre-doctoral clinical internship. Dr. Bai’s research utilizes naturalistic research methods to understand how stress and risky health behaviors affect internalizing symptoms and suicidality in teens across time. She also applies these methods to examine neuroendocrine mechanisms that link stress regulation, psychopathology and susceptibility to risky health behaviors. Dr. Bai is leading Project SAFE, a research study focusing on evaluating a novel mobile ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and intervention (EMI) tool for use with parents and teens as a companion to brief in-person acute care interventions.  This project is funded by the American Psychological Foundation. Dr. Bai also provides expertise in statistical and ecological momentary assessment methods.