Rabeeh Azarmehr

Education

Research

My research interests are mainly focused on childhood adversity and the underlying psychosocial mechanisms that can affect youth’s mental health and adjustment. Particularly, I am focusing on the association of adversity with brain networks and substance use positive expectancy.

Teaching

Teaching Assistant, HDFS 4330: Diversity and Human Development (Spring 2022) 

Awards

Editorial Appointments

Service

Outreach

I have successfully completed 40 hours of Community Outreach work on behalf of the GCDS Center. As part of our Family and Community Engagement team in Spring 2024, I contributed to the center's mission of community engagement in a meaningful way for children ages 6.5 up to 9 and their caregivers in Athens and rural Georgia.

Advisory Committee

Dr.Oshri

Dr.Kogan

Dr.Geier

Areas of Expertise

Childhood maltreatment, Impulsivity, Substance Use, and Neuroregulatory Processes

Certificate in Quantitative Methodology-2023

 Specialization in Neuroscience

Poster Presentations:

Azarmehr, R., Geier, C. F., Oshri, A. (April 2026). Parental drug use problems and adolescent marijuana positive and negative expectancies: The mediating role of negative urgency and moderating role of behavioral inhibition. Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA), 15-18 April 2026.

Bradley-Pikes, A., Azarmehr, R., Kogan, S. (Nov 2025). Internalized Racism and Depressive Symptoms Among Young Black Men: The Mediating Role of Attachment-Related Processes in Emerging Adulthood. Proposal for the 2025 NCFR Annual Conference, 19-22 Nov 2025.

Lomeli, D., Azarmehr, R., Geier, C. F., Oshri, A. (April 2025). The impact of adolescent screen time on internalizing and externalizing problems: The moderating role of impulsivity. National Research Conference at Brown Decision, 12 April 2025. 

Azarmehr, R., Geier, C. F., Oshri, A. (TBD- 2025). Neighborhood threat predicts adolescent positive alcohol expectancies via increased salience network-nucleus accumbens connectivity. ABCD Insights and Innovations Meeting (AIIM), Meeting canceled, 2025.

Morse, S., Azarmehr, R., Geier, C., Oshri, A. (2024). Psychological control leads to youth’s internalizing and externalizing behavior: The moderating role of negative affect and sleep problems- UGA Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO) Poster Presentation, April 8-9th, Spring 2024, Athens, GA.  

Azarmehr, R., Howard, C., Geier, C. F., Oshri, A. (Sep 2024). Negative urgency mediates the effect of family conflict on cannabis positive expectancy: The moderating role of ACC. Flux Annual Conference, Sep 27-30 2024.

Azarmehr, R., Reck, A. J., Howard, C., Oshri, A. (July 2023). Examining the link between impulsivity and alcohol use via emotion regulation among young adults in respiratory sinus arrhythmia reactivity context, ISDP 26-28 July 2023.

Bradley-Pikes, A., Reck, A., Azarmehr, R., Kogan, S. (Nov 2023). Differential mechanisms linking internalized racism to externalizing symptoms among black American adolescents. Proposal for the 2023 NCFR Annual Conference, 8-11 Nov 2023.

Azarmehr, R., Reck, A. J., Zhang, L., Oshri, A. (November 2022). COVID-19 stress exacerbates the effect of child maltreatment on negative affect via increased identity confusion during adolescence, ISDP 9-11 Nov 2022.

Zhang, L., Carvalho, C., Azarmehr, R., Cui, Z., Howard, C., & Oshri, A. (September 2022). Latent typologies of sleep patterns: Associations with resting-state functional connectivity, internalizing and externalizing problems. Poster presentation at the Flux Congress at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France.

Symposiums

Symposium title: Sleep During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence Among Youth, Adolescents, and Parents

Paper: Zhang, L., Azarmehr, R., Carvalho, C., Friedman, B., Evans, A., Oshri, A. (March 2023). Pre-Covid sleep predicts sleep quality during the pandemic: The exacerbating role of stress and loneliness. Presented at SRCD 2023 Biennial Meeting, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Books

Current Classes

Current Research

Job Description

 Undergraduate Student Coodrinator at Georgia Center for Developmental Science: Assisted with URA interviews, recruitment, course registration, lab hours, workshops, and mentoring (each semester, we have about 15 URAs; all of them are mainly CURO students)

Research Assistant at Georgia Center for Developmental Science: Conducted human-subjects research focused on child and adolescent development, including home-visit data collection, fNIRS procedures, participant preparation, quantitative analysis, and manuscript writing.

MRI Scanner at UGA Bio-Imaging Research Center for GCDS reserach studies: Performed MRI scans for children in developmental research studies, ensuring participant safety, comfort, and protocol compliance while supporting high-quality neuroimaging data collection.

Journal Articles

Publications

Azarmehr, R., Geier, C. F., Oshri, A. (Manuscript Under Review). Parental drug use problems and adolescent cannabis expectancies: The mediating role of negative urgency and moderating role of behavioral inhibition. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Azarmehr, R., Howard, C. Geier, C. F., Kogan, S.M., Oshri, A. (2026). Negative urgency mediates the effect of family conflict on cannabis positive expectancy: The moderating role of anterior cingulate cortex. Addiction Biology.

Oshri, Assaf, Cullin J. Howard, Linhao Zhang, Ava Reck, Zehua Cui, Sihong Liu, Erinn Duprey, Avary I. Evans, Azarmehr, R., and Charles F. Geier (2024). Strengthening through adversity: The hormesis model in developmental psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology:1-17.

Azarmehr, R., Ava J. Reck, Linhao Zhang, and Assaf Oshri (2024). COVID‐19‐related stress exacerbates the effect of child maltreatment on negative affect via increased identity confusion during adolescence. Journal of Adolescence, 96, no. 1: 18-30.

Kogan, Steven M., Elizabeth Kwon, Gene H. Brody, Azarmehr, R., Ava J. Reck, Tracy Anderson, and Megan Sperr (2023). Family-centered prevention to reduce discrimination-related depressive symptoms among Black adolescents: secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial. JAMA Network Open 6, no. 11.

Azarmehr, R., Shalchi, B., and Ahmadi, E., (2020). Impulsive behavior as a mediator between childhood maltreatment and emotional disorders. Iranian Journal of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences 14, no. 4

Azarmehr, R., and Ahmadi, E., (2019). The role of anxiety sensitivity and attentional control in predicting the tendency toward addiction in youth. Iranian Journal of Health Psychology 2, no, 45-50.

Working Papers