Experienced educator eager to help improve your math skills - in and around Decatur!

Manna's resume

Manna Sirak
linkedin.com/in/mannasirak

Education:

University of Washington, Seattle, WA
BS in Psychology, minors in Diversity and Education, Learning and Society
Dean’s List, 3.57 overall GPA

Relevant courses: Precalculus (3.0), Calculus (3.7), Psychology Probability and Statistics (3.2), Statistical Inference in Psychological Research (3.4), Cognitive Psychology and Peer TA for Cognitive Psychology (3.7), R+ Computing in Psych Research (4.0), Neurobehavioral Lab (4.0), Research Methods in Psychology (3.8), Undergraduate Research


Research experience:

Research Specialist -- Grady Trauma Project at the Emory University School of Medicine, Dept. of Psychiatry , Atlanta, GA
August 2017-Current

• Research staff at the Grady Trauma Project, the largest civilian study of civilian trauma and PTSD
• Primarily worked with the Intergenerational project focusing on the transmission of trauma sequellae across generations in low-income, urban African American families
• Conducted in-depth clinical interviews with children ages 8-14 and mothers centering around trauma, mental health symptomatology and physical health
• Responsible for the recruitment, scheduling and execution of the MRI portion of the study
• Data Management in the REDCap project database, scoring of interviews with specialized psychological and statistical software
• Analysis of fMRI data using Statistical Parametric Mapping 8 in MatLab and Statistical Package for the social sciences
-- Poster: Sirak, M., van Rooij, S. J., Stevens, J., Vance, L. A., & Jovanovic, T. (2018, April). Neural Correlates of Worrying Among African American Children. Poster session presented at Anxiety and Depression Association of America Annual Conference, Washington D. C.

Undergraduate Researcher -- Stress and Development Lab at the University of Washington
Principal Investigator: Dr. Kate McLaughlin
April 2016 - June 2017

• Conducted research on social learning of fear and memory-guided attention and on typical emotional development with children ages 4 to 16
• Protocol improvement and implementation under the supervision of a graduate student and postdoc researcher
• Collected and scored physiological data, administered Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence and coded data.
• Data collection using MatLab, Eprime, AcqKnowledge, RedCap, and Qualtrics
• Conducted first hiring interviews with prospective research assistants, trained new research assistants and helped maintain recruitment databases
-- Poster: Sirak, M. (May, 2017). Effects of Peer Rejection on Emotion Regulation and Internalizing Psychopathology and Moderation by Sex. Poster session presented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

Undergraduate Researcher -- Early Childhood Cognition Lab and the Center for the Science of Social Connection at the University of Washington
Principal Investigators: Dr. Jessica Sommerville, Dr. Jonathan Kanter
June 2014 - January 2016

• Recruited and scheduled child subjects, and ran child subjects in a natural setting for Arianne Eason’s study on children’s unconscious racial biases
• Gained experience with data entry, literature reviews, video editing, administrative tasks, and eye-gaze coding
• Assisted professor in developing a measure on how social connection can affect an individual’s tendency to make racially insensitive comments

Experience working with children:

Substitute Therapeutic Counselor at Childhaven of King County
• Worked with other therapeutic counselors to provide stimulating and emotionally enriching preschool daycare to children who have experienced trauma and/or have been placed in the Foster Care system
• Coordinated with full time counselors to administer individualized behavior plans and keep track of behavior improvement over time
Certifications: Agency Affiliated Mental Health Counselor, CPR, Blood Bourne Pathogens

School Age Counselor at Kids’ Co., Seattle, WA
• Interacted with a variety of children of different ages, as well as their parents
• Addressed behavioral and first aid issues and lead group activities
Volunteer at Youth for Christ in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
• Taught English to children from low income and unstable family backgrounds, some of whom had experienced trauma
• Presented experience upon return to professors in two of the aforementioned labs
Co-President of International Justice Mission UW Campus Chapter
• Student chapter of International Justice Mission, an organization of lawyers, psychologists and social workers serving as advocates for victims of human trafficking, forced labor and other forms of slavery in 12 developing countries
• Lead meetings and organized events to fundraise and educate student body