Michelle Newman

Michelle Newman is a Professor of Psychology at Pennsylvania State University's Department of Psychology within the College of Liberal Arts. She holds a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1992) and serves as the Principal Investigator of the Laboratory for Anxiety & Depression Research (LADR). Her research program spans adult clinical psychology with a focus on anxiety disorders and depression.

Dr. Newman's research interests center on the nature and treatment of anxiety disorders and depression, with particular emphasis on the contrast avoidance model. Her work examines etiology and classification of disorders, individual predictors of psychotherapy outcomes, and the impact of brief digital interventions. She employs cutting-edge methodologies including ecological momentary assessment/intervention studies, machine learning approaches for emotion detection and therapy outcome prediction, and experimental paradigms examining underlying emotional processes.

Analysis of her recent publications reveals a strong focus on transdiagnostic approaches to anxiety and depression, with particular emphasis on emotional contrast avoidance mechanisms. Her work bridges basic emotion science with clinical applications, frequently examining how momentary emotional processes relate to disorder maintenance and treatment outcomes. A significant portion of her recent work involves developing and testing digital interventions for anxiety disorders.

• Raymond Lombra Award for Distinction in the Social or Life Sciences (2019)
• Toy Caldwell-Colbert Award for Distinguished Educator in Clinical Psychology (2019)

Dr. Newman has mentored numerous graduate students who have gone on to successful academic careers, including Nur Hani Zainal (now Assistant Professor at National University of Singapore), Hanjoo Kim (postdoctoral fellow at Michigan Medicine), Ki Eun Shin (assistant professor at Long Island University), and Lucas LaFreniere (assistant professor at Skidmore College). Her lab has secured substantial grant funding supporting research on digital mental health interventions, emotion regulation processes, and longitudinal studies of anxiety and depression.

The Laboratory for Anxiety & Depression Research (LADR) conducts multiple concurrent projects examining basic emotional processes and developing innovative treatments for anxiety disorders. The lab employs diverse methodologies including ecological momentary assessment, randomized controlled trials of digital interventions, neurocognitive studies, and large-scale network analyses of psychopathology.