The Psychology Department is pleased to present our fifth annual list of extraordinary alumni who have made noteworthy contributions to the field!
The 2026 NC Distinguished Alum
Amanda McGough
Dr. Amanda Cobb McGough is a licensed psychologist who specializes in suicide prevention. Dr. McGough completed her doctorate under Dr. Rosemery Nelson-Gray where her passion for suicide prevention was bolstered by her exposure and training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy. She is a former Board President for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s North Carolina chapter where she served for 9 years. She has been part of suicide prevention efforts across the entire state of North Carolina, including advocacy, education, support for loss survivors, and championing research. Providing this support and training in rural Eastern North Carolina where she grew up, has been especially rewarding for her. Dr. McGough consults and speaks on suicide prevention and bereavement on local and national levels. Her work in this area has included trainings for the general public, school staff, clergy, medical professionals and mental health professionals. She founded a local Charlotte non-profit called Psychology for All, which provides therapy services for uninsured adults without access to care. Dr. McGough runs her own private where she works with children, teens and adults. She was recognized by the Charlotte Ledger as a 40 Over 40 winners for the impact of her volunteer efforts around suicide prevention training and consultation. She is passionate about reducing mental health stigma and using education to save lives.
The 2026 Distinguished Alum
Nathan Kimbrel
Dr. Nathan Kimbrel is an internationally recognized expert in suicide and psychiatric genomics research. He is a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Biomedical and Laboratory Research & Development Research Career Scientist at the Durham VA Health Care System; Co-Lead of the VA’s National Suicide Prevention Research and Interventions Network (SPRINT); Associate Director of the Genomics Core for the VA Mid-Atlantic Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC); and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine.
An Ohio native, Dr. Kimbrel earned his B.A. with honors from the Ohio State University. He received his PhD from UNC Greensboro in 2009 under the mentorship of Dr. Rosemery Nelson-Gray. Due to the rapidly increasing rise in suicide that was being observed among Veterans at that time, Dr. Kimbrel chose to pursue his postdoctoral training at the VA Center for Excellence for Research on Returning War Veterans with the goal of addressing this pressing issue. He ultimately elected to focus his research studies on suicide risk prediction, with a specific focus on genomics due to the fact that genomic factors are estimated to account for nearly half of the variance in suicidal thoughts and behaviors; however, the genetic basis of suicide was almost entirely unknown when he received his first grant to study this issue in 2010.
Dr. Kimbrel is presently the Principal Investigator of seven federally funded research grants which are broadly focused on the identification of genomic and environmental risk factors for suicide; the development of sophisticated risk prediction algorithms to identify individuals at increased risk for suicide; and the assessment and treatment of suicidal and nonsuicidal self-injurious behavior. His team utilizes a wide array of methods to study these problems, including genome and epigenome-wide association studies, whole genome sequencing, RNA sequencing, large language models, natural language processing, iterative random forest, ensemble transfer learning, convolutional neural networks, longitudinal assessment studies, and randomized clinical trials. His research has led to the identification of a wide range of genomic and epigenomic risk factors for suicidal behavior; numerous assessments and risk algorithms for suicidal and nonsuicidal self-injury; and novel treatments for self-injurious behavior, PTSD, and substance use disorders. To date, he has published more than 300 scientific articles in a variety of prestigious scientific journals, including Science, Nature Genetics, World Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, Molecular Psychiatry, and Biological Psychiatry, and his work has been cited more than 15,000 times.
The ultimate goal of Dr. Kimbrel’s program of research is to identify the genes and biological pathways that underlie suicidal behavior so that novel assessment and treatment approaches can be developed to treat and prevent suicidal behavior.
Under 10 Alumni Award
The Under 10 group all graduated since 2014 and each honoree has continued to learn, grow and use their degree to advance the field and their communities in significant ways. We look forward to learning about the remarkable things these talented young scholars will accomplish in the future.
Jessica Caporaso
After earning her PhD in Developmental Psychology from UNCG, Jessica was hired in the UNCG Psychology Department as the Director of PsyAdvise, a new undergraduate advising system that she worked to develop. She also teaches PSY 122 “Careers and College Success in Psychology”, a course she redesigned with new curriculum related to academic and personal success. She was awarded the 2026 Thomas Undergraduate Research Mentor Award (PTF) for her work as a Principal Investigator in UNCG’s DUCK Lab, where she also maintains a productive research partnership with the Greensboro Science Center. Jessica is also an advisor of Psi Chi and is the Emerging Scholars Representative for the Jean Piaget Society.
Alexander Christensen
Alexander P. Christensen received his PhD from UNCG in 2020 and is currently Assistant Professor in the Psychology and Human Development department at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College. His research advances psychological measurement through network psychometrics, reconceptualizing constructs as dynamic systems of interacting variables. He has been recognized as an APS Rising Star (2024) and was the APA Division 5 Anne Anastasi Distinguished Early Career Contributions Award (2026) for reshaping how researchers think about psychological structures. He actively maintains several R packages including EGAnet and NetworkToolbox, and has over 85 publications spanning psychometrics, personality, and clinical science.
Erin Denio
Erin Denio is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Duke University where she specializes in neuropsychological assessment and treatment of youth experiencing acute or chronic illness. She is committed to improving access to evaluation services. For instance, she has partnered with other psychologists within the Duke Health system to increase access to autism evaluations for medically complex youth. With support from the Tisch Brain Tumor Center, Dr. Denio also leads a philanthropic clinic offering no-cost neuropsychological evaluations for children with brain tumors. Additionally, she is actively involved in training, including supervising graduate students, interns, and postdoctoral fellows.
Emily Herry
Dr. Emily Herry is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Converse University. Dr. Herry engages in translational research through a contextual and community level lens that advances our mechanistic understanding of social contexts and stigma in the mental health and development of LGBTQ+ people. Their work has resulted in over a dozen publications, more than 20 presentations at national and international conferences, and an ongoing research grant through the American Psychological Foundation. Dr. Herry is also a dedicated mentor for their students inside and outside of the classroom, and an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights at the local and national level.
Kimberly Marble
Dr. Kimberly Marble is an Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Department of Psychology & Human Development at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. Her teaching and research center around how children and adults learn from others, build trust, and evaluate morals. She investigates whether information about social groups influences how we assess the quality of another person’s knowledge and character, especially in academic contexts. Dr. Marble is a Vanderbilt University CARES Fellow (2025) and serves as Director of Professional Students in her department, coordinating centralized support and professional development opportunities for the master’s and professional students.
