Vanja Radoncic

Vanja Radoncic is a research coordinator for the TREND-funded pilot study “Racial Differences in Attentional Bias and Cue Reactivity to Smoking-Related Cues among Smokers” (PI: Dr. Lesia Ruglass, Research on Addictive Disorders lab, the City College of New York). She is also the research coordinator for Dr. Denise Hien (PI: Trauma and Addiction lab, The City College of New York). Her interests focus on treatment, research and training in the areas of addiction and trauma related disorders. She is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi University. Vanja graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. She received several notable awards at Columbia, including the Jennifer A. Pack Award and Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Fellowship for academic excellence in psychology. She was also a recipient of the Women’s Forum Education Fellowship as well as the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation Scholarship, awarded for academic and community leadership. As an undergraduate at Columbia she was involved in research looking at the intergenerational transmission of traumatic stress and depression in the Behavioral Medicine Program at Columbia University Medical Center. She proceeded to study different aspects of traumatic stress and substance use associations at the Substance Use Research Center at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She currently works in a human laboratory inpatient unit that accommodates research participants with substance use problems who often have a history of severe trauma.