Project Title: Event-level Antecedents of Heavy Drinking Among Bisexual and Heterosexual Women With and Without Histories of Sexual Assault
Position: Postdoctoral Fellow
Institution: Brown University
Funding NIH Institute/Center: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
Grant ID: K99AA030079
Gabriela López was raised in Chicago, Illinois, by Mexican immigrant parents. Her close ties to family kept her local for her undergraduate education, and she completed dual bachelor’s degrees in applied psychology and gender and women’s studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. While an undergraduate student, she became interested in mental health disparities among women, particularly among sexual minority women. Dr. López earned her PhD in psychology at the University of New Mexico, where she examined mental health disparities and protective factors among Black, Latina, and White bisexual and lesbian women. She completed her clinical internship at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School, expanding her skillset in women’s mental health. She then completed postdoctoral training at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University’s School of Public Health, where she focused on further understanding mental health and alcohol use disparities among bisexual+ women with histories of sexual assault. Dr. López is very interested in promoting diversity in higher institutions. She serves as mentor at Brown University’s mentoring program and as a member of the diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging subcommittee, which gathers, examines, and maintains data on the recruitment and retention of persons from diverse backgrounds across all levels of training for both the university’s department of psychiatry and human behavior and Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies.