Saúl ‘SJ’ Urbina-Johanson, MPH

Saúl, also known as SJ, graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 2019, with a B.A. in Psychology and a secondary in Art, Film, and Visual Studies. He is passionate about using developmental clinical science and epidemiological methods to better understand how adverse experiences early in life influence risk for psychopathology and contribute to mental health inequities.

As an undergraduate, Saúl completed an honors thesis under the mentorship of Drs. Charles Nelson, Lara Pierce, and Katie McLaughlin. His thesis, for which he was awarded highest departmental honors, assessed telomere length as a biomarker of differential susceptibility to maternal stress in infancy. After graduating, he participated in a research fellowship with Stanford’s Center on Poverty and Inequality and later joined Dr. Charles Nelson’s lab as a Clinical Research Specialist.

Saúl went on to receive a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. While here, he worked with Drs. Natalie Slopen and Henning Tiemeier to study how structural stressors contribute to mental health inequities within the United States. He began working again with Dr. Katie McLaughlin for his MPH practicum, for which he coordinated an open trial for THRIVE, an intervention developed by Dr.McLaughlin and her collaborators to mitigate the effects of adversity on young children’s mental health. Saúl is thrilled to now be a Clinical Research Coordinator with the lab.

This fall, Saúl is applying to doctoral programs in clinical psychology. You can also find him performing comedy in Boston, surfing, and spending time with his friends and his pets.