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Dr. Elizabeth O’Neal’s Childhood Injury Risk Prevention Lab (ChIRP Lab) at the University of Iowa is recruiting graduate students for Fall 2025. Dr. O’Neal’s primary research interest focuses on designing, testing, and implementing evidence-based, behavioral approaches to examine and intervene on injury risk among typically and atypically developing children, adolescents, and older adults with a particular focus on road traffic injury. Dr. O’Neal uses a multi-disciplinary approach built on principles of public health and psychological science. Much of her work uses immersive virtual environments to safely expose participants to injury risk. This allows us to better understand the behaviors that contribute to injury risk and test interventions. 

Dr. O’Neal’s ongoing projects include an NIH funded investigation into how parental instruction and practice can enhance novice teen drivers’ ability to anticipate potential roadway hazards, an NSF funded project examining how parental risk tolerance and executive functioning impact children’s subsequent pedestrian injury risk, and a pilot project exploring the influence of the gut microbiome on decision making when crossing roads with traffic.

Interested applicants are encouraged to contact Dr. O’Neal directly: [email protected]. Application deadline is Jan 15, 2025. For more information about the application process or to apply, please visit https://www.public-health.uiowa.edu/how-to-apply-cbh/