Nicole Kouri

Nicole Kouri

Department

Clinical Psychology

Nicole is a fourth year doctoral student in clinical psychology working with Dr. Valerie Simon. She is interested in the intersection between interpersonal violence, posttraumatic stress and dissociation and how systems, whether institutional or familial, promote potentially maladaptive coping strategies. For her dissertation, Nicole is examining how symptoms of postraumatic stress and dissociation influence romantic and sexual development in adolescence. Both her research and clinical work have taught her the importance of the body and an individual’s connection to it. Nicole also specializes in statistics and is a consultant for Wayne State's Research Design and Analysis Unit. 

Prior to attending Wayne State, Nicole obtained her M.A. in Psychology at the New School for Social Research in New York City with a concentration in substance abuse counseling. She researched the effects of childhood trauma on threat detection, dissociation, emotion regulation and psychophysiology, working with Dr. Wendy D’Andrea in the Trauma and Affective Psychophysiology Lab. Nicole previously worked in foster care and was a research coordinator in the psychiatry department at New York University Medical Center, conducting behavioral and neuroimaging studies with veterans experiencing posttraumatic stress disorder. 

Research interest(s)/area of expertise

• Dissociation

• Posttraumatic stress

• Substance use and addiction

• Statistics

Education

• Wayne State University, Detroit, MI; Clinical Psychology, Ph.D. Candidate, 2019 – Present
• New School for Social Research, New York, NY; Psychology, M.A. 2019
• Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY; BA 2010

Awards and grants

• Opioid Workforce Expansion Program (OWEP), Wayne State University (2022–2023)
• Betty J. Neitzel Psychology Graduate Students Summer Research Award, Wayne State University (Summer 2022)
• Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute Graduate Fellow, Wayne State University (2021–2023)
• Wayne State University Office of the Provost’s Research Stimulus Award Program in Social and Behavioral Determinants of Health (June 2021)
• Competitive Thomas Rumble Fellowship, Wayne State University (2020)
• The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation Caul Research Grant (July 2018)
• The New School for Social Research Merit Scholarship (2017–2019)