Anna Egbert, Ph.D., arrived at St. Joseph’s University intending to facilitate an inclusive educational environment that encouraged her students to embrace the differences of others.
Since joining the psychology department at the Brooklyn Campus for the fall 2022 semester, Dr. Egbert is establishing a lab dedicated to studying factors that promote healthy brain and cognitive aging, as well as adverse factors, such as living with chronic stress related to stigma.
“My teaching activities emphasize learning by doing,” Dr. Egbert said. “I prioritize using active learning tools and encouraging my students to take advantage of hands-on opportunities.”
A Summer Research Grant
In early 2023, Dr. Egbert received a summer research grant from the University for a project that seeks to shutter stigma and discrimination in marginalized populations, such as with people of color, LGBTQ+ people, the gender-diverse population and individuals living with HIV.
Dr. Egbert is no stranger to the field of study, having focused her doctoral work at the University of Warsaw on HIV infection and the intersecting effects of aging on psychiatric, cognitive and brain health.
The research associated with Dr. Egbert’s grant will create training opportunities for students interested in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program at St. Joseph’s.
“This research project opens new opportunities for students’ hands-on learning of how to conduct psychological research and disseminate scientific knowledge to a wide range of audiences,” Dr. Egbert said.
“To date, I have gathered a group of five research assistants who are part of conducting this research,” she added. “They will be presenting our studies at the SJNY Research Symposium.”
Past Research
Dr. Egbert’s past research yielded groundbreaking evidence and led to her joining the Aging, Mobility and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, as a post-doctoral fellow.
In 2020, Dr. Egbert published a first-of-its-kind systematic review of neuroimaging observations of the brain consequences of SARS-CoV-2. She has since published an article about the rise in depression among adults worldwide amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
