Toria Herd is currently a PhD program in developmental psychology (4th year student) at Virginia Tech. Her major research interests include using a developmental psychopathology framework and longitudinal modeling to understand how risk and protective factors, namely parent-adolescent relations and emotion regulation development, relate to adolescent adjustment and psychopathology. Her research is supported by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01 DA036017) to her mentors, Jungmeen Kim-Spoon and Brooks King-Casas. This grant has been used to examine biological, social, and personality processes (at multiple levels of analysis) as risk and resilience factors for brain development, developmental psychopathology and health risk behaviors (related to risk taking and decision making, such as substance use and risky sexual behaviors) in adolescents and young adults. Additionally, Toria is also very passionate about science communication and translating basic science to public policy—allowing meaningful research to actually help people. Outside of research, she enjoys crafting, swimming, reading (for fun!), and FaceTiming with her 20 month old niece!