Our team

Dr. Joan Asarnow is a Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in the David Geffen School of Medicine and Director of the Youth Stress and Mood Program. Her current research, teaching, and clinical work focus on the development, evaluation, and dissemination of treatments for depression, self-harm, and suicide prevention in children and adolescents. Dr. Asarnow specializes in cognitive-behavioral and patient and family centered treatments and has done extensive work bringing evidence-based treatments to primary care and emergency department settings. Dialectical behavior therapy, a form of cognitive-behavioral treatment, is offered through the Youth Stress and Mood Program.

Dr. Miranda is the Co-Director of YSAM and a Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA. Dr. Miranda is a clinical psychologist with expertise in treatment research and a specific interest in working with minority and low-income populations. To this end, she was the Senior Scientific Editor of "Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity, A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General" (2001) and was a member of the Institute of Medicine and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA) council. Building on this work, Dr. Miranda leads the program's efforts to adapt care strategies to be sensisitive to the needs of diverse populations, notable adoptive youth and youth who identify as sexual and/or gender minorities.

Kalina Babeva, PhD continues her work at YSAM while she also works as a psychologist at Children’s Hospital Seattle in the Mood and Anxiety Program. Dr. Babeva is a psychologist whose work emphasizes treatment and research on the prevention and treatment of depression, suicidality, and self-harm in children and adolescents. Dr. Babeva was previously a postdoctoral fellow at YSAM within the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the UCLA Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, where she also completed her pre-doctoral internship. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Southern California. Her work at YSAM emphasizes assessment and psychotherapy training and quality assurance for both an NIMH-funded Randomized Trial of Stepped Care for Suicide Prevention in Teens & Young Adults and the UCLA-Duke Center for Trauma Informed Suicide and Self-Harm Treatment and Prevention (ASAP) funded as part of SAMHSA’s National Child Traumatic Stress Network. She also contributes to other YSAM research and services initiatives aimed at improving care for youth who suffer from suicidal and self-harm behaviors and improving the lives of youths and families.

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.

Benjamin Rolon-Arroyo (PhD, University of Massachusetts Amherst) is a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Recipient at UCLA under the mentorship of Drs. Joan Asarnow and Jeanne Miranda. His research interests focus on the development of disruptive behavior disorders and the impact of traumatic stress in youth, as well as the improvement/development of assessment tools for these populations. Currently, his work is examining relations between stress and negative outcomes, such as self-harm and suicide risk. 

Jocelyn Meza, PhD, received her B.A. in Psychology at UCLA, her Ph.D. in Clinical Science at UC Berkeley and her 2-year clinical internship at UCSF. Her research focuses on understanding the risk and protective factors associated with self-harm and suicide in vulnerable populations. Currently, as a UCLA NIH T32 fellow, her research examines predictors and moderators of positive treatment outcomes in a randomized control trial aimed at reducing suicide and self-harm in adolescents. Next year she will transition back to UCSF to complete her Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship under the mentorship of Marina Tolou-Shams, Ph.D. As a Chancellor’s Fellow she will be examining the predictors associated with non-suicidal self-injury among court-involved, non-incarcerated Latinx youth. Her research aims to better understand how to predict and prevent self-harm and suicide, a growing global and public health concern.

Lucas Zullo, Ph.D. obtained his doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Currently he is a NIMH Diversity Fellow and Clinical Instructor in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UCLA, under the mentorship of Drs. Joan Asarnow and Jeanne Miranda. His research focuses on adolescent suicide prevention, with an interest in harnessing mHealth technology for suicide prevention and improving care for suicidal LGBTQ youth. Currently he is assisting with the development of a mHealth intervention that serves as a decision aid on lethal means restriction for parents of suicidal adolescents. On his NIMH Diversity supplement, Dr. Zullo is studying the attitudes and beliefs of ethnic and racial minority youth around mHealth utilization for suicide prevention.

Chase Venables recently graduated from Harvard University in 2019, with a B.A. in Psychology. In his role as the YSAM Research Coordinator, Chase manages the SAMHSA-funded ASAP Treatment and Prevention Center, coordinates several studies that are currently being conducted within YSAM, and is in charge of patient recruitment and scheduling for the YSAM Dialectical Behavior Therapy Clinic.