My name is Gabriel A. León (“Gabe”) and I am a first-generation Latino college graduate and a proud native of Southern New Mexico.

I am currently a second year PhD student in Psychology at University of Southern California (USC) and a graduate research assistant working in the Neuroendocrinology of Social Ties (NEST) Laboratory under the mentorship of Dr. Darby E. Saxbe.

As an aspiring clinical psychologist, I aim to conduct research that informs personalized, family-focused behavioral health interventions that meet the needs of marginalized communities impacted by chronic stress and trauma.

Research Interests

Broadly, I study interpersonal dynamics within families and close relationships - with a specific focus on stress. Namely, I am interested in the biopsychosocial processes by which stress propogates and remits within the family system. I aim to leverage multimodal, biobehavioral data streams to understand targets of interventions that support resilience in parents and children coping with traumatic and chronic stress.

Current Projects

• My most recent work focuses on the effects of chronic stress on interpersonal emotion dynamics between parents and infants at six-months postpartum.

• In another project, I am working on identifying the biopsychosocial correlates of hair cortisol concentration - a non-invasive measure of HPA axis output and a possible marker of chronic stress. To answer this question, I am applying contemporary machine-learning techniques (e.g., random forest regression) to a high-dimensional cross-sectional sample of mothers and infants from across the United States. Findings from this study will be highly informative for researchers that use hair cortisol to study stress and health.

• To prepare for dissertation, I am collecting data via ambulatory assessment (i.e., EMA, sleep actigraphy) from a diverse sample of families from the Los Angeles area to study the impact of early life adversity and peripartum trauma on stress coping during daily life.

Clinical Work

Prior to attending USC, I worked for Embark Behavioral Health, an adolescent outpatient clinic in Phoenix, AZ. There, I provided individual therapy for clients ages 13-25 and co-led three intensive outpatient groups for substance use disorder, social anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder, and self-injurious behavior.

At USC, I provide therapy and neuropsychological services through the USC Psychological Services Center (PSC), where I am supervised and trained in culturally-responsive cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), and acceptance and committment therapy (ACT).

Every Wednesday, I visit Homeboy Industries, the largest gang rehabilitation center in the world, to co-faciliate a psychoeducation and process group for formerly incarcerated parents with histories of gang-involvement. Getting the opportunity to work with these families fills my heart with indescribable joy each week.