Melissa is currently a fifth-year doctoral student in the Developmental Psychology Ph.D. program at UNC-Chapel Hill. Prior to moving down to North Carolina, she completed her B.S. in Human Development and Family Studies from Penn State University. Melissa studies the developmental and biopsychosocial processes that result in health disparities in the early life course. Specifically, she is interested in the interplay between the broader environment and family contexts, and how risk or deprivation in either of these contexts can ultimately lead to poor socioemotional and physiological outcomes, with an emphasis on infant sleep.