Meet The Lab
Steve W. J. Kozlowski
OPTIMA Director
Steve W. J. Kozlowski, PhD is a World Class Scholar and Distinguished University Professor at the University of South Florida (he was previously at Michigan State University). He is a recognized expert in the areas of dynamic multilevel organizational systems theory and computational process theorizing; team leadership and team effectiveness; and learning, development, and adaptation. The goal of his programmatic research is to generate actionable theory, research-based principles, and deployable tools to develop adaptive individuals, teams, and organizations. His research has generated over $11M in funded work and is, or has been, supported by the Agency for Health Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR), among others. He has produced over 500 articles, books, chapters, reports, and presentations; his work has been cited over 47,000 times (Google Scholar); and his impact is ranked among the top 2% of all scientists in the world (Ioannidis, Boyack, & Baas, 2020). Dr. Kozlowski is a recipient of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award and the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research (INGRoup) McGrath Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Groups. He is the Editor for the Oxford Series on Organizational Psychology and Behavior and Editor for the SIOP/Oxford Organizational Science, Translation, and Application Series. He is the former Editor-in-Chief and a former Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Psychology. He is an Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Management and The Leadership Quarterly, and has served on the Editorial Boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Current Directions in Psychological Science, Human Factors, the Journal of Applied Psychology, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Management Association, American Psychological Association (APA), the Association for Psychological Science (APS), the International Association for Applied Psychology (IAAP), and SIOP. He is a member of the APA Publications and Communications Board (P&C, 2021-2026; Chair 2025-2026) and the P&C Journals Advisory Committee (Chair, 2024-2025). He is a Past-President of SIOP (2015-2016), a former SIOP Research and Science Officer (2017-2023), and a former member of the APA Advocacy Coordinating Committee (2019-2021). He was the first Chair of the APA Open Science and Methodology Committee (2019-2020). Dr. Kozlowski received his B.A. in psychology from the University of Rhode Island, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in organizational psychology from The Pennsylvania State University.
Georgia T. Chao
OPTIMA Director
Georgia T. Chao, PhD is a Professor of Psychology and the Area Director for the Industrial-Organizational Psychology program. Prior to joining USF in 2020, she was a Professor of Management at the Eli Broad Graduate School of Management at Michigan State University. Her research interests are in the areas of teams, work adjustment, and work design with new technologies (exoskeletons). Her research has won awards, including the Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior award presented by the Academy of Management’s OB Division (1995), the Best Paper Award by the Editorial Board of Organizational Research Methods (2014), and the William A. Owens Scholarly Achievement Award in recognition of the best journal publication in 2013 by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (2015). She was elected to several positions in the American Psychological Association (APA), Academy of Management, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) and served as SIOP’s President in 2020-2021. She is a Fellow of APA and SIOP and currently serves on three editorial boards. In 2017, Dr. Chao received SIOP’s Distinguished Service Award. She recently completed a two-year detail at the National Science Foundation (2018-2020). In addition to her primary duties as the Science of Organizations Program Officer, she also served as a Program Officer for two foundation-wide programs: NSF’s Research Traineeship and the Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier. Dr. Chao received her BS degree in psychology with honors from the University of Maryland and her MS. and PhD degrees in industrial and organizational psychology from The Pennsylvania State University.
Anthony Misisco
ABD Graduate Student
Anthony Misisco holds a MA in organizational psychology from Michigan State University and is a PhD student at the University of South Florida. He researches team performance and adaptation, work-family boundary dynamics, training design and delivery, and diversity and inclusion. He has applied experience conducting job analysis, validation studies, and adverse impact analyses. He utilizes advanced statistical techniques such as Bayesian methodology, polynomial regression, and dynamic panel modeling to advance understanding of organizational phenomena.
Rebecca Lindgren
4th Year Graduate Student
Rebecca Lindgren earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, with a minor in Spanish Studies, from Clemson University. During her time there, she contributed to research on topics including nurse burnout, infertility in emergency physicians, and team communication within military settings. Now in her fourth year as a PhD student in the Industrial-Organizational Psychology program at USF, her current research explores workplace acceptance of occupational exoskeletons. Her broader research interests span the future of work and employee well-being.
Wesley Gardiner
4th Year Graduate Student
Wesley Gardiner graduated from the University of South Florida in 2020 with a major in Psychology with a focus on Data Science. He is interested in teams, motivation, individual differences, process-level thinking, psychometrics, and learning/using different machine learning techniques/natural language processing. He is also passionate about the mission of open science /open source. Feel free to connect with Wesley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesley-gardiner4546/.
Jenna Bowker
3rd Year Graduate Student
Jenna Bowker is a PhD student in the Industrial-Organizational Psychology program at the University of South Florida. She completed her Bachelor’s of Science at Wayne State University with a double major in psychology and statistics and a minor in mathematics. Her research focuses are social networks, gender, diversity and inclusion, and leadership. Currently, Jenna is working on her master’s thesis, “Social Networks and Gender Disparities in Leadership: A Computational Modeling Approach.” Her expertise spans various research methods, including qualitative analysis, computational modeling, and machine learning. For more information, Jenna can be contacted at bowkerj@usf.edu or via LinkedIn.
Enzo Novi Migliano
3rd Year Graduate Student
Enzo Novi Migliano is a PhD student in industrial and organizational psychology at the University of South Florida. He is broadly interested in the future of work, technology acceptance, and teams. Enzo conducts his research using sophisticated tools and techniques such as computational modeling, simulations, and machine learning. For more information: https://linktr.ee/enzonovimigliano.
Caroline Deal
3rd Year Graduate Student
Caroline Deal graduated from the University of Tulsa with her bachelor’s in psychology and minors in Spanish and political science. In the I-O psychology Ph.D. program, she works primarily with Dr. Griffin, Dr. Chao, and Dr. Gillespie. She is studying physiological synchrony development in teams and its relationship to team performance as moderated by affective states for her thesis. She is also interested in parsing out the predictors of physiological synchrony development over time. Other projects include investigating the implementation of exoskeletons and its effects on the workplace, cross over of job stress to health outcomes in couples, and sexual harassment of women leaders. For more information, feel free to email her at carolinedeal@usf.edu.
Steph Boettcher
1st Year Graduate Student
Steph Boettcher graduated with a B.A. in Psychology from the University of South Florida. Broadly speaking, Steph's research interests lie at the intersection of teams and tech-enabled assessments. Recent interests include computational modeling methodology and artificial intelligence within human-agent teams. Steph is also deeply committed to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility, and Belonging (DEIAB) efforts within all aspects of her research. With applied experience in the development and validation of adaptive simulation-based personnel assessment tools, Steph has contributed innovative solutions for talent sourcing, selection, and training across various sectors, including commercial, defense, and military. Steph welcomes the opportunity to connect through both email: sboettcher@usf.edu and at the following links: https://linktr.ee/stephanieboettcher
David Taullahu
1st Year Graduate Student
David Taullahu earned his BA in Psychology with a concentration in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from DePaul University alongside minors in Organizational Communication and French. As an undergraduate, David served as president of DePaul’s chapter of Psi Chi and completed an honors thesis titled, "Pandemic Pressure: Race, Job Insecurity, and Stress during the COVID-19 Pandemic." Upon graduating, he worked for two years as a laboratory manager, focusing on emotion and cognition across the adult lifespan. David's primary research interests include teams, leadership, and affect. David can be contacted at dtaullahu@usf.edu.