SEPI Research Committee |
The Research Committee fosters and encourages research on psychotherapy integration, administers the Award Program, and organizes the Research Consultation Program in collaboration with the Program Committee. |
| Ioana R. Podina, Ph.D.Co-Chair Dr. Podina is a licensed clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, certified by the Albert Ellis Institute, New York. She is currently the head of the Cognitive Clinical Sciences Laboratory from UB and a Ph.D. supervisor at the same institution. Her main research interests target the development of scientifically based e-Health interventions for behavior change, the investigation of clinical effectiveness moderators and mechanisms of change in psychotherapy. She also has a keen interest in bridging the fundamental research-practice gap. In concert with these interests, Dr. Podina was recently the PI of a research project focused on using e-health psychotherapy to treat emotional eating problems in adults at risk for obesity (PNII-RU-TE-2014-4-2481, ‘SIGMA: A Self-help, Integrated, and Gamified Mobile-phone Application for weight management in young adults). Currently, she is the PI of a project aiming to use natural language processing to identify psychopathology markers in the written language of cancer survivors (PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2019-2140 - „ The aiCARE project - An Artificial Intelligence-powered Conversational therapeutic Agent for Anxiety and Depression in young adult cancer survivors_. Dr. Podina uses in her research meta-analytic methods, multilevel longitudinal models, and ecological momentary assessment. She joined SEPI as a regular member and later on as a research committee member. |
 | Jonathan Egan, Ph.D.Co-Chair Jonathan Egan is the principal psychology manager of the University Hospitals Group in Limerick, Ireland. Previously he was a deputy director of the doctorate in clinical psychology program in the University of Galway from 2012-2023. He trained in Affect Phobia Therapy (APT) with Kristin Osborn (Stockholm). He is also training as a trainer of McCluskey’s Exploratory goal corrected psychotherapy, which addresses adults exploration of the effect of their attachment system on well-being. His peer reviewed research addresses how APT integrated with McCluskey’s model of adult attachment styles can account for people’s wellbeing when somatoform and psychoform dissociation, attachment style and ability to meet one’s closeness needs and affect expression can explain a significant proportion of the variance accounting for depression, anxiety, stress, somatisation and psychological overlays across chronic health conditions. Hard-wired defences such as dissociation appear to mediate the relationship between the restorative attachment system and a person’s physical and psychological well-being |
| James Boswell, Ph.D.Past Chair |
| Brittany King, Ph.D.Committee Member |
| Erkki Heinonen, Ph.D.Committee Member |
| Alessio Gori, Ph.D.Committee Member |
 | Alain KianCommittee Member |