Faculty and Partners

PI, TRANSFORM Grant
Director, Mt. Hope Family Center (MHFC)
Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Rochester

For three decades, Dr. Noll has been conducting research to strengthen causal inference regarding the developmental and biologic impacts of child maltreatment through longitudinal, prospective research and contiguous NIH funding. Dr. Noll has been the PI of several prospective, longitudinal cohort studies of the impact of abuse and neglect throughout development and across generations. Her primary research foci include: the bio-psycho-social consequences of childhood sexual abuse, pathways to teen pregnancy and high-risk sexual behaviors for abused and neglected youth, the long-term adverse health outcomes abuse survivors, midlife reversibility of neurocognitive deficits in stress-exposed populations, the impact of high-risk internet and social media behaviors on teen development, and the primary prevention of sexual abuse. She is the founding Program Director of the NICHD P50 Capstone Center for Excellence, The Translational Center for Child Maltreatment Studies (TCCMS; P50HD089922) and founding Principal Investigator of the P50 Project 1, The Child Health Study the TCCMS. The chief thrust of Dr. Noll’s research and infrastructure grants is to leverage cutting-edge science to aid evidence-informed policymaking that implores a larger public investment in the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect.

PI, TRANSFORM Grant
Past Director, Mt. Hope Family Center (MHFC)
Professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry, University of Rochester

Dr. Toth’s interests are broadly focused in the area of developmental psychopathology. Throughout her career, Dr. Toth has been committed to bridging research and clinical practice and she is committed to promoting greater use of effective services in the community. Consistent with a developmental psychopathology framework, Dr. Toth’s research utilizes a multiple-levels-of-analysis strategy that integrates social, emotional, and psychophysiological processes. As an Associate Editor of Development and Psychopathology and a member of the Child Maltreatment editorial board, she consistently encourages the field to consider the implications of its work for advancing the best interests of individuals struggling with the trauma accompanying maltreatment.

Dissemination and Outreach Core Director, TRANSFORM Research Center
Director of Dissemination, Sustaining Change
Director of Public Policy, Susan B. Anthony Center
Emeritus Professor, Psychiatry, University of Rochester

Since 1983, Dr. Cerulli has worked with survivors of violence in a variety of capacities including as a counselor, advocate, prosecutor, defense attorney, and researcher. Following a T32, she completed a K01 NIMH randomized control trial (RCT) in Family Court, the first known RCT in such a setting with victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). She has also focused her research and intervention studies on suicide, homicide, and recruitment and retention methods among high-risk vulnerable populations using Community-Based Participatory Research principles.

Research Director, Mt. Hope Family Center
Associate Professor, University of Rochester

Dr. Handley’s research is grounded in the developmental psychopathology framework and explores multilevel and transactional risk and protective mechanisms of development among at-risk children and families. She has data analytic expertise with multiple-levels-of analysis directly applicable to child welfare research, including data analysis with epigenetic, genetic, immune, and neuroendocrine data. Dr. Handley also provides quantitative support and consultation to faculty and students in various departments at the University of Rochester.

Research Faculty, Mt. Hope Family Center

Dr. Li’s research focuses on the effects of family adversity on child and adolescent development, including strategic adaptation to it, as well as variation in susceptibility to environmental exposures (e.g., harsh parenting). Her work is guided by theoretical conceptualization of evolutionary developmental perspective, family system theory, and developmental psychopathology framework.

Research Faculty, Mt. Hope Family Center

Dr. Russotti’s research is guided by a developmental psychopathology framework and focuses on understanding how psychopathology unfolds over time within an individual as a result of complex culminations of dynamic interactions between the individual and their environment. He is particularly interested in the etiological roots and mechanistic underpinnings of stress-related and internalizing disorders (e.g., depression and anxiety). More specifically, Dr. Russotti has examined how the developmental timing of adversity may influence internalizing disorders, with an emphasis on early-life adversity. Recently, Dr. Russotti has investigated the effect of parental factors and high-risk parenting conditions (parental psychopathology, parental maltreatment history, and parenting stress) on offspring psychopathology. Dr. Russotti is also involved in longitudinal research designed to investigate the long-term psychological and biological effects of chronic stress (e.g., compromised physical health, allostatic load, epigenetic modifications). Dr. Russotti is a licensed clinical social worker in New York State with expertise in providing psychotherapy interventions to children, adolescents, and adults.

Professor of Psychology, University of Rochester

Dr. Melissa Sturge-Apple is Dean of Graduate Studies in Arts, Sciences & Engineering, and a Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Rochester. She has established expertise in advancing knowledge of our understanding of parenting within the family context and implications for child development broadly, with a particular emphasis on parenting at risk. At a substantive level, her work has advanced how different theoretical formulations may inform understanding of the determinants of aberrations in parenting within stressful ecologies including family systems theory, stress system functioning, self-regulation frameworks, and attachment theory.

Clinical Director, Mt. Hope Family Center
Sr. Research Associate, Clinical Director & Assistant Professor, University of Rochester

Dr. Todd Manly has served in Principal Investigator, Co-Investigator, Evaluator, and Project Director roles on several federally-funded research projects involving the linkages among child maltreatment, domestic violence, poverty, and community violence with preschool and school-aged children as well as adolescents. As Clinical Director at the Mt. Hope Family Center, she has coordinated the implementation of evidence-based treatment models and evaluation of these models in treatment evaluation research. She has conducted numerous trainings on the impact of trauma on children’s development and on implementation of evidence-based trauma treatment for children at high risk for abuse and neglect.