Graduate Students
Katrina Oselinsky, M.S.
She/Her/Hers
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Katrina is a fifth-year graduate student in Graham Behavioral Medicine Lab.
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Amanda Spitzer, B.A.
She/Her/Hers
Hometown: Vista, California
Amanda joined the Graham Behavioral Medicine Lab in February 2021 and is currently a second-year PhD student. She completed her undergraduate degree in architecture at Rice University and is interested in designed environmental factors affecting health and social behaviors.
She is enthusiastic about mixed reality as a method of achieving high levels of control and external validity in built environmental research. With her career in research, she intends to utilize psychological science research methods to produce meaningful knowledge about the physical environment’s influence that can advise designers, modify built environments, and thereby, initiate meaningful shifts in society’s attitudes, norms, and actions toward social issues such as physical health, wellbeing, and social justice.
In her spare time, she runs and hikes. Since she grew up in Southern California, she enjoys almost any activity in the sunshine! She also loves to bake desserts and travel to visit her two sisters.
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Email: amanda.spitzer@colostate.edu
Yiqing "Skylar" Yu, B.A.
She/Her/Hers
Hometown: Suzhou, China
Skylar joined the lab in May 2021 as a post-baccalaureate research assistant, and now she is a first-year graduate student in the Applied Social and Health Psychology doctoral program. Skylar earned her B.A. degree from Carleton College in psychology in 2021. After graduation, she has been working with Dr. Dan Graham here at Colorado State University on promoting daily physical activities among college students, and with Dr. David Creswell at Carnegie Mellon University on self-affirmation interventions for pain reduction among breast cancer patients. Skylar did her senior thesis on the etiology of and potential interventions for stress-eating. After exploring a variety of research topics, including PTSD, decision making, stress eating, and physical activities, Skylar hopes to integrate different areas of psychology into health-related topics.
Skylar intends to study stress management and healthy lifestyles in this doctoral program. More specifically, she hopes to study how stress and healthy habits influence each other, and how people can manage stress in a healthier way.
In her leisure time, she is a blogger sharing her recipe and her life oversea with 3000+ followers on social media.
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Email: skylar.yu@colostate.edu
Katie McMahon, B.S.
She/Her/Hers
Hometown: Bartlett, Illinois
Katie joined the lab in August of 2022 as a first year graduate student in the Applied Social and Health Psychology doctoral program. During her undergraduate experience at the University of Pittsburgh, Katie was involved in four different research labs with varying foci of social justice, eating disorders, and healthy aging and inflammation. Her research interests narrowed to health behaviors and outcomes after completing her honors thesis project on the relationship between diet, adiposity and inflammation and were strengthened through working with underserved populations facing health issues at a crisis accommodation center in Sydney, Australia.
After graduating, Katie worked as a neuroimaging research assistant on an exercise intervention research study in Pittsburgh, contributing to her passion for health behavior interventions work. Her research interests are mainly focused on how and why people develop their health belief systems. More specifically, how social influences (i.e. peers/romantic partners and media) impact our healthy and unhealthy food choices and feelings of eating control within different social contexts.
When she is not in research mode, Katie is often busy creating new recipes in the kitchen, painting outdoors, journaling and biking on trails with friends.
Email: katie.mcmahon@colostate.edu