Dr. Ryan Watson studies the health and well-being of sexual and gender diverse (SGD) youth and young adults. Coming from a family with no college graduates, he began his research career when he spotted a flyer that advertised a research opportunity. The flyer hung outside his classroom at UCLA, mostly covered over by spring break and fraternity advertisements. He figured research was important if he wanted to go to graduate school someday, and he might first pursue a chance to get involved in research before signing up to party for spring break.

After two years collecting data from children in intercity Los Angeles schools, Ryan found some preliminary evidence of health disparities among SGD young people. Specifically, it appeared that some SGD students had reported much more cyberbullying compared to their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts, but there were too few SGD students in the study to draw any meaningful conclusions. This observation inspired him to further study SGD young people. One of his research mentors gave him the business card of a professor she had met in Europe while at a conference—and said to go study with him. Ryan put the card in his dorm room desk, re-discovered it a year later, and found himself completing his PhD in Human Development and Family Sciences with that same professor at the University of Arizona.

Ryan’s work has taken place in several countries: the US, Norway, Canada, Taiwan, and Australia. His dissertation, in part, compared Norwegian youth to U.S. youth. He was interested in whether or not SGD young people living in a country like Norway (where same-sex rights and marriage had been granted for many years) were better off than youth living in the US, where many of these rights did not exist. In Canada, Ryan completed his postdoctoral training, where he examined trends and disparities in health for both Canadian and US young SGD individuals.

Ryan continues to focus his scholarship on SGD youth and young adults, their relationships within family and school contexts, and their health experiences. For the past decade, he has employed quantitative techniques using large non-probability and representative datasets to better understand the mechanisms that drive well-documented injustices in health, school, and community experiences for SGD individuals. He has served as principal investigator on two NIH grants that totaled more than $1M, both of which fund him to intervene in the health disparities facing young sexual and gender diverse young people.

Since beginning at UConn, Ryan has collected data from more than 35,000 SGD individuals – mostly youth under the age of 18. From these data, Ryan and his team have published more than 165 peer-reviewed articles. Ryan’s next steps are to secure NIH funding to follow some of the youth he sampled in 2022. Stay tuned!

Ryan’s research has been featured on CNN, NPR, Washington Post, Live Science, USA Today, and several other media outlets. He has leadership roles in the Society for Research on Adolescence and is a consulting editor for the Journal of Research on Adolescence, Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, LGBT Health, and AIDS & Behavior.

Outside of work, Ryan enjoys his bearded dragon (named Lizzo) that he adopted on day 1 of the COVID-19 pandemic (all his friends got dogs, and Ryan wasn’t ready to commit!). Lizzo is 5 now! He was a collegiate bowler at one time, but now he just enjoys bowling for fun. You might see him bowling with Lizzo on his shoulder someday in the future—well, let’s hope not.

Eva Lefkowitz lived in Connecticut the first 18 years of her life. After living in the Boston area for six years, she earned her Ph.D. from University of California, Los Angeles in Developmental Psychology.  She then served as a professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the Pennsylvania State University for 18 years, including roles as Professor-in-Charge of the HDFS Graduate Program and Professor-in-Charge of the Undergraduate Program. In 2016 Eva moved to UConn to become Department Head of HDFS. In her almost nine years as department head, Eva has enjoyed getting to know the faculty, staff, and students in HDFS, CLAS, and UConn.  

Eva’s research has two primary areas: (1) sexual health and (2) wellbeing among LGBTQ+ adolescents and young adults. In the first area, she uses a developmental perspective to examine predictors of negative and positive aspects of sexual health, and the broader health and relationship implications of sexual health. Her research demonstrates that a range of individual and contextual factors, from the couple level of who the partner is up to the institutional level of identification with a religious institution, are associated with sexual health. In addition, her research highlights the importance of sexual behaviors beyond their implications for physical health, demonstrating that by young adulthood, sexual behavior can positively contribute to well-being. Eva views mentoring as the most important and rewarding aspect of her career, and her students strongly influence the direction of her research. In the second area, driven by the interests of some of her UConn graduate students, she has examined wellbeing and identity expression among LGBTQ+ college students, and how relational and contextual factors influence these areas. She and her students received funding and collected data on LGBTQ+ college students around the country as they adjusted to the COVID-19 pandemic. More recently they collected data on how LGBTQ+ students’ experiences with family, peers, romantic partners, and close others affect their well-being, and how academic breaks may change these experiences.   

 Eva has served as a principal investigator, co-investigator, or faculty mentor on projects funded by the NICHD, NIAAA, NIDA, NIA, and the WT Grant Foundation. She has published 108 peer reviewed articles and book chapters. At the national level, Eva has been in leadership roles for the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) and the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood (SSEA). She has contributed to the review process as Associate Editor for Developmental Psychology, on the editorial boards of Journal of Research on Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood, as a reviewer for more than 25 other journals, and as a Review Panel Chair and Reviewer for SRA, SRCD, and SSEA. She also has reviewed grant proposals for NIH, and for similar federal agencies outside the United States. In 2008 Eva received the Evelyn R. Saubel Faculty Award from the Penn State College of Health and Human Development.  

 At UConn, Eva’s favorite classes to teach have been the 350 student lifespan individual and family development class (for many students, their first college class ever), and a small graduate seminar on professional and career development.  

 When not working, Eva spends time with her husband Eric, also a UConn professor, and enjoys visiting  her twins, both college first years, who were frequently delighted by a childhood filled with are her extensive knowledge of adolescent development (not exactly). Eva loves cooking and baking, walking, beach vacations, and listening to audiobooks, and still hasn’t figured out how to write a spotlight that doesn’t sound like a dating app profile. 

Assistant Professor Na Zhang recently organized a mindfulness workshop at UConn Stamford. She led students in meditation and discussed how to work with stress and improve quality of attention. Na plans to have one or two more of these workshops this semester.