Biography
In 2017, Dr. Jester joined the Women's and Infant Mental Health Program in the Department of Psychiatry. She is currently working on evaluating the effects of Infant Mental Health- Home Visiting on mental health and parenting outcomes for caregivers and mental health and development outcomes for infants and toddlers.
Prior to this move, she worked with data from the Michigan Longitudinal Study (MLS) for over 17 years. The MLS has a wealth of data on children of alcoholic men, spanning over 28 years. Dr. Jester has studied various aspects of development of the children and alcoholism in the adults, using sophisticated longitudinal data analysis.
Dr. Jester's work has included latent trajectory class analysis, latent growth modeling, structural equation modeling, measurement invariance, and confirmatory factor analysis. She is interested in the development of children in high-risk environments and in developing interventions to promote well-being of children in adverse circumstances.
Areas of Interest
- Child development in high-risk environments
- Effect of parent substance use on child development
- Interventions to prevent development of delinquency in youth
Credentials
- Postdoctoral Fellowship, Dept. of Psychology, Wayne State University
- Postdoctoral Fellowship in Computational Neuropsychology, Salk Institute, La Jolla CA
- Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore MD
- B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston IL
