Dr. Dahyeon Kang is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She earned her doctoral degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where her work focused on the etiology of alcohol and substance use disorders through multimodal research methods, including alcohol administration, neuroimaging, transdermal biosensors, and ecological momentary assessments. At the University of Washington’s Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Kang investigates how individual and social factors interact to influence alcohol and cannabis use behaviors.
As a clinical and quantitative psychologist, my work bridges statistical practice and psychological theory to better identify for whom, under what conditions, and why substance-related health disparities are greatest across development. My substantive research seeks to understand how individual differences in stress and developing self-regulation shape substance use and disorder from adolescence through young adulthood, and how these associations explain substance use disparities among sexual and gender minoritized communities. Stemming from this work, my methodological research is centered on improving the analysis and interpretation of nonlinear effects spanning parametric and non-parametric methodologies.
Hello! I’m the medical director for the Long Term Civil Commitment Units at the Center for Behavioral Health and Learning. This is a new program as of July 2024 and I am excited to help get it off the ground. I completed my medical school training at the University of Cincinnati, then residency at Oregon Health & Science University, then addiction psychiatry fellowship at UW, then worked at the Puget Sound VA for five years and Providence Swedish for six years prior to starting at UW. I’m thrilled to be part of the team here and looking forward to this next chapter in my career.
I am a trained Behavioral Psychologist with a PhD in Health & Human Performance. The main goal of my work is to reduce substance-related harms and improve quality of life for people experiencing problems related to their substance use. I work closely with community members who use drugs to inform my line of research and address key needs identified. My primary appointment is at the Harm Reduction Research and Treatment (HaRRT) Center within the UW School of Medicine and hold an Affiliate Faculty appointment within the School of Public Health. My aim is to adapt, refine, and disseminate harm reduction programs through digital health interventions to empower individuals and ameliorate substance-related harms.
The Pravetoni group focuses on development and translation of medical interventions against substance use disorders (SUD) and other chemical and biological threats. Current efforts are: 1) vaccines, monoclonal antibodies (mAb), and small molecules to treat or prevent SUD, opioid use disorders (OUD) and overdose, 2) mechanisms and biomarkers underlying or predicting efficacy of immunotherapeutics and medications in pre-clinical models of SUD and OUD patients, 3) novel strategies to enhance vaccine or medication efficacy, including immunomodulators, small molecules, adjuvants, nanoparticles, polymers and other delivery platforms, 4) Vaccines, mAb, and clinical biomarkers against infectious diseases (e.g., Pseudomonas aeruginosa and novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2), 5) biosensors for field detection or diagnosis.
Dr. Walukevich-Dienst (hear my name) is a licensed clinical psychologist and an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington.
Her research is focused on identifying psychosocial and contextual factors associated with alcohol and cannabis misuse and co-use among young adults, including social influences (e.g., romantic partners, use partnerships), affect management motives, co-occurring mental health concerns, and high-risk substance use events and contexts.
Dr. Walukevich-Dienst aims to leverage this information to develop and test innovative, technology-informed prevention and intervention efforts to disseminate in real world settings.
She also provides psychotherapy to patients at the University of Washington’s Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic and provides supervision and training to psychology graduate students and psychiatry residents in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Link to Dr. Walukevich-Dienst’s CV.
Koriann Cox, Ph.D. graduated from Northeastern University and is licensed in the state of Washington. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in co-occurring addiction and mental health and has a range of clinical experience with a variety of concerns including depression, anxiety, trauma, reproductive mental health, and substance and behavioral addictions. Dr. Cox’s strengths-focused approach emphasizes the mutual development of goals for therapy and ongoing collaboration between herself, the patient, and the care team. Dr. Cox uses a number of therapeutic modalities including but not limited to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Cognitive Processing Therapy.
I am a behavioral neuroscientist who earned my PhD from Rutgers University and completed a postdoc here, in the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department at the University of Washington. My lab, located in the MIRECC at VA Puget Sound, aims to identify the neural mechanisms underlying substance use disorders and maladaptive decision making.
My primary focus is studying the neurobiological consequences and predictors of chronic fentanyl use. To accomplish this, I utilize cutting-edge in-vivo optical neuroscience tools (photometry, optogenetics, miniscopes) along with a newly developed oral-fentanyl self-administration model for rats and mice. I am also the lead developer for DeepSqueak, a popular software package for bioacoustics analysis that integrates machine-vision algorithms with an intuitive graphical interface to accelerate animal communication research.
