Contact Information

Overview | How Program Works | Who Should Apply | Academic Directors

Co-directors of the GC in ASI are Dr. Carl Lejuez and Dr. Cristina Risco. They may be reached via e-mail: crisco1@umd.edu.

Dr. Carl Lejuez is a Professor and the Director of Clinical Training in the Clinical Psychology Program, the Founding Director of the Center for Addictions, Personality, and Emotions Research, and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Maryland. Dr. Lejuez’s research is translational in nature applying laboratory methods to understand real world clinical problems, with the goal of using this understanding to develop novel assessment and treatment strategies. His research spans the clinical domains of addictions, personality pathology, and mood disorders, and he is most interested in the common processes across these conditions. His research has been consistently funded by the National Institutes of Health since his arrival at Maryland in 2001.

Dr. Lejuez has 15 years of clinical experience across a range of drug use treatment settings with underserved communities in the Washington DC metropolitan area. He has considerable experience training and supervising therapists internationally including regions of South America, Europe, the Middle East, and China. Dr. Lejuez has taught multiple classes in the domain of clinical psychology including introduction to clinical psychology, clinical laboratory, and assessment and treatment of addictive behaviors. To learn more about Dr. Lejuez’s research and clinical interests, click here.

Dr. Cristina Risco is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of Maryland jointly appointed with the Center for Addictions, Personality, and Emotion Research in the Department of Psychology and the First-Year Innovation & Research Experience (FIRE) program in the Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost. Her background is in the applied specialty of counseling psychology and she is Affiliate Faculty with the Doctoral Program in Counseling Psychology at the University of Maryland. Dr. Risco’s research aims to address health disparities experienced among racial/ethnic minority populations by identifying socio-cultural contributors to the emergence of substance abuse and other health-related risk behavior. Her postdoctoral research and training has been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a division of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Risco’s clinical interests focus on delivering evidence-based interventions targeting health-related risk behavior to underserved populations. She has served as a research therapist on multiple treatment development studies examining the efficacy of behavioral treatments for drug use and co-occurring psychological conditions with underserved communities—in both community mental health and clinical research settings. Dr. Risco has supervised trainees across a range of clinical training backgrounds and has taught foundations of clinical practice including introduction to counseling psychology and micro-counseling skills laboratory. To learn more about about Dr. Risco’s research and clinical interests, click here.