Director/Principal Investigator, Senior Research Scientist

Linda Charmaraman, PhD, is a senior research scientist at Wellesley Centers for Women and founder and director of the Youth, Media, & Wellbeing Research Lab. Her research focuses on risky and resilient digital media behaviors within vulnerable peer and family contexts. Recent research interests include digital citizenship and how to engage youth in (re)defining and monitoring healthy digital media use.

Alyssa Gramajo is a Research Associate at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College. At WCW, Gramajo supports the work of the Youth, Media & Wellbeing Research Lab as the project coordinator for data collection. In this capacity, Gramajo is a liaison to schools overseeing recruitment and scheduling, data management, dissemination projects, and manuscript editing. She also works closely with the lab’s Wellesley College student research assistants and interns.

Wellesley College Department of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction Lab and Media Arts and Sciences (MAS) program

Catherine co-leads the Youth, Media, & Wellbeing Research Lab activities pertaining to summer STEM workshops and developing apps for healthy social media use in middle school. Her research interests focus on how people relate to each other through social technologies and the social implications of our increasing dependence on the internet.

*Joining our team in January 2025!*

Maya is a postdoctoral researcher with the Youth, Media and Wellbeing Lab. Her multi-method research interests focus on the psychosocial risks and benefits of historically underrepresented adolescent’s social technology use and applying the social ecological framework to adolescence in the digital age. She also has experience working in nonprofit management for youth programs around civic engagement and storytelling. 

Executive Director of Veterans Education & Research Association 

Medical Editor, KidsHealth, Nemours Center for Children's Health Media

Boston Children’s Hospital, Digital Wellness Lab 

Wellesley College Department of Psychology

Lisette M. DeSouza, Ph.D., is a WCW Associate Research Scientist working with scholars at the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST). Her roles in the lab include methodological consultation and examining how social technology use intersects with youth development activities.

Kamilah Drummond-Forrester, an expert in social and emotional learning,  is collaborating with Linda Charmaraman to co-develop a middle school digital wellbeing curriculum. Kamilah brings expertise in racial equity, inclusion, and professional development support. Her approach puts students’ wellbeing at the center while meeting the needs of educators and families. Kamilah is also the former director of Open Circle, a social and emotional learning program of the Wellesley Centers for Women.

Diane Gruber, MA, is a Research Associate specializing in Child and Youth development at the National Institute of Out-of-School Time (NIOST). She brings her expertise as a licensed mental health counselor for children and adolescence to roles in the lab as an experienced field data collector and interviewer.

Jennifer M. Grossman, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) specializing in adolescent development and family communication about sex and relationships. Her roles include recruitment, implementation, and dissemination of lab research activities involving parents of middle school students and how they monitor and communicate to their adolescents about social technology use. 

Wellesley College Department of American Studies

Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a physician in the Departments of Medicine and Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and PI of the Developmental Risk and Resilience Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital 

Alicia Doyle Lynch, PhD, Founder of Lynch Research Associates, is a Developmental Psychologist specializing in statistical and methodological approaches for studying child and adolescent development. She leads our methodology team to provide guidance in conceptualization, design, data management, analysis, and interpretation of cross-sectional and longitudinal data.

Department of Pediatrics, University of Wisconsin Madison and PI of the Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team (SMAHRT)

Tufts Institute for Human-Animal Interaction, Tufts University