Zlatina Kostova, PhD is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry at the UMass Chan Medical School. With a strikingly multidisciplinary and multicultural education obtained in Bulgaria, Italy, Switzerland and the US, she has a strong background in clinical psychology and her main interests lie in the area of childhood trauma and mindfulness-based interventions. Dr. Kostova obtained her Masters degree in Clinical and Community Psychology at the University of Bologna in Italy, where she has been a licensed clinical psychologist since 2008. That Masters degree included a cross-cultural study on risky behaviors among Bulgarian and Italian adolescent. Her connected interest in trauma and integrated care was fostered during her doctoral study at the Università della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Switzerland, investigating the process of acceptance among patients with medical trauma (chronic pain) and their social support needs.

Dr. Kostova's post-doctoral appointment at UMass involves clinical training alongside work on several clinically-focused research projects. She is collaborating with the Child Trauma Training Center at UMass, working on a SAMHSA-funded project aimed at improving the identification of childhood trauma and to increase access to evidence based trauma treatment for at risk and underserved populations of local children and families. She is also involved in an NIH-funded project in collaboration with Harvard Medical School, implementing an online tool for people with serious mental conditions and bridging mental and physical health information. Her clinical work and training involved several rotations in inpatient and outpatient clinics, including the Adolescent Units at Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital, the Child Protection Program and the Outpatient Ambulatory Clinic at UMass.

The depth and diversity of Dr. Kostova's training has shaped her ability to understand and approach childhood trauma and integrated care from multiple perspectives, including several evidence-based approaches. She is currently involved in certification programs in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for kids and adolescents (TF-CBT) and in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy.

Celine Larkin, PhD is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Emergency Medicine at UMass Chan Medical School. She completed her PhD in Health Services Research at University College Cork, Ireland in 2013, focusing on self-harm presentations to emergency departments and associated risk factors for repetition. Dr Larkin was a senior researcher for four years at the National Suicide Research Foundation in Ireland and coordinated several research studies, including a cross-national implementation study of internet-based interventions for depression and a case-control study of suicide using psychological autopsy methods. In 2016, Celine joined UMass Chan Medical School as a postdoctoral researcher in implementation science. She is supervised by Dr Ziedonis of the Department of Psychiatry and Dr Boudreaux of the Department of Emergency Medicine and works on several ongoing studies, including Open Dialogue and ED-SAFE 2.

Research Interests
Celine's research interests reflect the multidisciplinary nature of health services research. Her research topics of interest include innovative interventions and processes of care for depression, suicidality, and psychosis, as well as broader organizational change and implementation research. The methods she has applied include systematic reviewing, intervention evaluation, registry-based research, in-depth interviews, and qualitative analysis.