Maria Kalantzis

Maria is a third year Clinical student, who is advised under Dr. Abby Braden. Maria received a Bachelors of Science in Psychology and minor in Music at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Maria’s main research interests involve how marginalized identities impact health outcomes, particularly, how stressors that are systemically embedded into society (i.e. perceived discrimination, acculturative stress) impact eating behaviors, HRV, and body image-related constructs. Maria is also interested in utilizing mixed research methodologies in order to both understand how one’s marginalized identity impacts health and understand how health behaviors transcend cross culturally. Maria also devotes their work to understanding how sociocultural factors impact post-surgery success for Bariatric surgery candidates. In her free time, Maria likes to sing in choir, play Legend of Zelda, and play with her golden doodle, Finn!