Megan Wirtz graduated from the University of Richmond in 2019 with a BA in Psychology and Theatre and a minor in Latin American, Latino, and Iberian Studies. At Richmond, her research examined the mediating effect of emotional intelligence on the relationship between socioeconomic status and well-being. Upon graduating, she joined the Behavioral Medicine Program at Massachusetts General Hospital as a Clinical Research Coordinator, where she assisted in research on substance use, chronic illness, and sexual and gender minority stigma and coordinated several intervention trials focusing on smoking cessation and medication adherence among people living with HIV. She joined the Hunter Psycho-Oncology Lab and the Health Psychology and Clinical Science Ph.D. program at the Graduate Center, City University of New York in 2021. Her primary research interests include how chronic illness, particularly cancer, influences identity formation in adolescents and young adults, and how survivorship affects health-related quality of life in those populations.