Principal Investigator:
Dr. Pamela Keel
she/her/hers
Pamela K. Keel, Ph.D., is Distinguished Research Professor and Director of the Eating Behaviors Research Clinic in the Department of Psychology at Florida State University. She received her A.B. in Anthropology summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1992, Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Minnesota in 1998 and completed her clinical psychology internship at Duke University Medical Center in 1998. Dr. Keel has received grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her research on the nosology, biology, epidemiology, and longitudinal course of bulimic syndromes. In addition, Dr. Keel is co-Principal Investigator and co-Director of the NIMH-funded Integrated Clinical Neuroscience Training Program at Florida State University. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Eating Disorders and Eating Disorders, and is a past Associate Editor for the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, and was a standing member of a grant review panel for the NIH Center for Scientific Review. Dr. Keel was elected as a Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders in 2006, Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science in 2013, and Fellow of the American Psychological Association in 2014. She served as President for the Eating Disorders Research Society in 2009-2010 and President for the Academy for Eating Disorders in 2013-2014 and received the Leadership Award in Research from the Academy for Eating Disorders in 2019.
Graduate Students:
Sarrah Ali
she/her/hers
Sarrah Ali is a fourth-year graduate student. She received her B.S. in Psychology from the University of California San Diego in 2016. She then joined the Nova Scotia Health Authority Eating Disorder Research Group, directed by Dr. Aaron Keshen, where she gained experience coordinating clinical trials for individuals with eating disorders. Sarrah is broadly interested in psychosocial risk and maintenance factors for eating disorders. She is currently working on projects exploring the relationship between deficits in self-concept clarity and eating disorder severity, as well as how ethnoracial status and its intersection with gender predict eating disorder pathology across adult development.
Ziyu (Ivan) Zhao
He/Him
Ziyu (Ivan) Zhao is a first-year clinical psychology graduate student. He received his B.A. in Psychology with honors and B.S. in Public Relations from Boston University in 2023. In his undergraduate years, Ivan focused on examining the longitudinal associations between exercising behaviors, body mass index (BMI), and mood disorders among male twins. He pursued his interests in eating disorders through examining the gender difference in the associations between weight discrimination and disordered eating among veterans. Following his undergraduate work, Ivan joined Mass General Hospital Multidisciplinary Eating Disorder Research Collaborative, where he gained experience in conducting eating disorder assessments and utilizing fMRI to collect brain imaging data from participants with Anorexia Nervosa. Ivan’s primary research interests include the reward and motivational aspects of eating disorders, body image concerns, and maladaptive exercise in men, women, and athletes. Additionally, he is interested in exploring the genetic and environmental factors contributing to disordered eating using genetically informed statistical methods.
Holly Spinner
she/her/hers
Holly is a first-year graduate student. She received her B.S. in Psychology from Penn State University in 2022. At Penn State, she worked as a research assistant in Dr. Kenneth Levy's Laboratory for Personality, Psychopathology, and Psychotherapy Research and Dr. Pamela Cole's Emotion Regulation Lab. She then worked as a behavioral research coordinator in Dr. Marian Tanofsky-Kraff's lab at Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland prior to beginning her graduate studies at Florida State. Holly is passionate about understanding the underlying mechanisms of eating disorder development in adolescents and young adults. She is also interested in exploring how emotion regulation ability affects the development and maintenance of disordered eating and how social media use impacts these relationships.
Alejandra Medina Fernandez
she/her/hers
Alejandra Medina is a first-year graduate student. She received her B.S. in Psychology (Clinical Track, Honors) with a minor in Statistics at the University of Central Florida in May 2024. During her undergraduate years, she completed a senior honors thesis examining the moderated mediating role of body image and exercise motivation in the association between exercise frequency and romantic relationship satisfaction. She also served as a research assistant in various clinical psychology labs, collaborating on projects focused on body image, substance use disorders, and loss-of-control eating (LOCE). Her current research interests broadly include sociocultural risk and maintenance factors for eating pathology and body image disturbances, with a particular focus on specific factors affecting Hispanic/Latino populations.
Project Coordinator:
Harmony Vides-Varini
Harmony graduated from Florida State University, summa cum laude with a B.S. in Psychology. While studying abroad with FSU in London, Harmony learned about Dr. Keel's ED research during a talk Dr. Keel gave at the Imperial College in London. Harmony joined the Eating Behaviors Research Clinic as an undergrad research assistant in 2022, where she began working on Dr. Keel's study: Eating Disorders Across Genders, Generations, and Adult Development Stages (AGGA), also known as the Harvard Health and Eating Patterns Study. In 2023, she was promoted to oversee the AGGA study as Project Coordinator of the Eating Behaviors Research Clinic. Given her dance background, Harmony is primarily interested in the prevalence of eating disorders in Competitive Dancers. In the future, she will pursue a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology.
Research Assistant:
Taylor Politi
she/her/hers
Taylor graduated from Florida State University in Fall 2023 with a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Child Development. After taking Dr.Keel’s “Eating Disorders in London” class while studying abroad, Taylor joined the Eating Behaviors Research Clinic as an undergraduate student research assistant in 2022. She currently works on Dr. Keel's study: Eating Disorders Across Genders, Generations, and Adult Development Stages (AGGA), as a post-baccalaureate Research Assistant and Clinical Interviewer. Taylor plans to pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology and is interested in researching self-esteem, compulsive exercising, and disordered eating amongst athletes.
InternFSU:
Sebastian Spadavecchio
He/Him/His
Sebastian is a senior at Florida State University majoring in Neuroscience with minors in Chemistry and Italian. He joined the Keel Lab in the summer of 2023 to gain research experience in eating disorders, a field he is passionate about pursuing at the graduate level. After assisting with advanced lab tasks, Sebastian applied for an internship in the lab to further develop his research skills. He plans to pursue a master’s degree in psychology to gain independent research experience, focusing on eating disorders in male populations, followed by a doctoral degree in clinical psychology.
Senior Honors Thesis:
Kenson Moore
Kenson, a junior at Florida State University, is on track to graduate in May 2025 with a B.S in Psychology and a minor in Sociology. Inspired by Dr. Keel’s "Eating Disorders" course, Kenson knew she wanted to be part of the lab. Currently, she is an active DIS student and a mentee in the Honors in the Major program, both under the direction of Dr. Keel. Her thesis explores the makeover trope in movies and the impact it has on appearance anxiety. Beyond academia, Kenson has practical experience from working at an Eating Disorder Facility. In the future, she will pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology.