Biobehavioral Development Lab at Purdue

Biobehavioral Development Lab at Purdue BDL at Purdue works with children and families to explore how children’s biology and environments shape development, behavior, and relationships.

We are interested in understanding how genetics, hormones, and prenatal and postnatal environments contribute to the development of child behavior and family relationships, and ultimately to use this information to prevent adolescent substance use problems. Adolescent substance use is widespread, and some youth who engage in substance use are at high risk for continued use, addiction, and mental health problems throughout the lifespan. We conduct a wide variety of research in the Biobehavioral Development Lab, which will lead to better targets for efforts seeking to prevent substance use problems and improve child behavior and family relationships. Current projects focus on the links between stress- and puberty-related hormones, genetic and environmental influences, and behavior problems and substance use. The role of prenatal environment in how these hormone systems develop and work together with genetic and environment influences is also a focus of current studies.

Lab photo!
05/08/2025

Lab photo!

A huge congrats to BDL grad students Claire Rosenberger, who won the College of Health and Human Sciences (HHS) Outstand...
05/06/2025

A huge congrats to BDL grad students Claire Rosenberger, who won the College of Health and Human Sciences (HHS) Outstanding Masters Student award, and Amy Loviska, who won the HHS Hero award! So proud of you!

Amazing job to our grad students Jennifer, Muskan, and Claire on their posters at the Society for Research on Child Deve...
05/05/2025

Amazing job to our grad students Jennifer, Muskan, and Claire on their posters at the Society for Research on Child Development conference last week in Minneapolis!!

04/16/2025
One of the new grants led by the BDL!
08/09/2024

One of the new grants led by the BDL!

🔔 BIG NEWS! 🔔

HDFS faculty members (Kelsie Muller, Shelley MacDermid-Wadsworth, Cezanne Elias, and Kristine Marceau) have partnered with Purdue Extension Educators to support families’ well-being in the aftermath of natural disasters with funding provided by the USDA/NIFA Smith-Lever Special Needs Competitive Grants Program.

After a relatively brief initial response to families’ well-being in the immediate aftermath of disaster (e.g., mental health first aid programs), there is little continued support despite families often remaining in uncertain and stressful situations (e.g., temporary housing, without a clear picture of what their “new normal” is). There is a pressing need for programs to support families in building resilience skills in the weeks and months after disasters to reduce the mental health problems and negative impacts on parents and children.

Congrats to this group on an outstanding achievement!👏

🔗 Learn more about their work: https://portal.nifa.usda.gov/web/crisprojectpages/1032876-supporting-family-resilience-in-the-aftermath-of-disasters.html

🥰 our lab!Photo credit Margaret Martin, edited by Sohee Lee. 😁 Thank you,!
12/08/2023

🥰 our lab!

Photo credit Margaret Martin, edited by Sohee Lee. 😁 Thank you,!

SO proud of Dr. Olivia Robertson who wrote an incredible dissertation examining the co-development of body mass index, p...
10/05/2023

SO proud of Dr. Olivia Robertson who wrote an incredible dissertation examining the co-development of body mass index, puberty, internalizing problems. She used 2 different kinds of family-based studies and even developed a brand new statistical model to improve our ability to tell if correlations typically found in other studies might actually be casual. AMAZING WORK Olivia! Congratulations!!!!

Congratulations 🎉 to Gina Canino-Quiñones, who received a Bob L. and Joyce Beery Miles Undergraduate Research Enhancemen...
04/28/2023

Congratulations 🎉 to Gina Canino-Quiñones, who received a Bob L. and Joyce Beery Miles Undergraduate Research Enhancement Award from the Center for Family at Purdue this morning! We're so excited for the awesome work you're doing to understand how stress hormones and parent-child relationships develop and change during puberty!

Check out our upcoming student presentations at the Society for Research on Child Development in Salt Lake City, Utah! T...
03/23/2023

Check out our upcoming student presentations at the Society for Research on Child Development in Salt Lake City, Utah!

Thanks Amy Loviska for the graphic!

06/06/2022

🎉 Congratulations to Kristine Marceau, assistant professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, on receiving a 2022 Teaching Leadership Award from the Center for Instructional Excellence at Purdue University!

Here's to another great year! I'm so proud of how much we all learned and accomplished! We'll miss you Julia and Kaetlyn...
04/29/2022

Here's to another great year! I'm so proud of how much we all learned and accomplished! We'll miss you Julia and Kaetlyn... but we know you'll do amazing things! Thanks for sharing your time and energy with us!!!

Address

Hanley Hall
West Lafayette, IN
47907

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 8am - 5pm

Telephone

+17654949410

Website

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