Meet the Team

Co-Director of the Youth Resilience Unit
Jennifer completed her BSc in Psychology at UCL and PhD at King's College London, before undertaking research positions at the National Institute of Mental Health in the US, University of Oxford, King’s College London. Now, she co-directs the Youth Resilience Unit at Queen Mary, University of London.
Her research interests lie in the development and early intervention of mood and anxiety problems. Jennifer is a mother of two, and in her spare time, she enjoys travelling, reading crime novels and drinking wine. Jennifer is the Principal Investigator on the DEER Study.

Co-Director of the Youth Resilience Unit
Dennis graduated from a medical school in Ukraine in 1998 and came to England to undertake his postgraduate training. He completed his higher training in child and adolescent psychiatry at Guy’s and Maudsley Hospitals and is currently a consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry. In September 2021, Dennis was appointed to co-lead the Youth Resilience Unit at Queen Mary, University of London.
His main professional interests include the prevention of borderline personality disorder and effective interventions for self-harm in young people. When he is not busy with research, he loves cold water swimming, especially after a long run. Dennis has also climbed lots of mountains, including Mount Everest!
Dennis is the Chief Investigator of an NIHR-funded research study comparing two alternative pathways for the care of young people aged 12 to 18 requiring hospitalisation: treatment as usual (TAU), comprising inpatient adolescent unit admission, and intensive community care service (ICCS), an experimental care pathway.

Research Fellow
Francois van Loggerenberg has a PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, having trained as an experimental psychologist in South Africa. He is a Chartered Psychologist with nearly 20 years' experience working in Global Health, initially on the behavioural aspects of HIV infection, and more recently on mental health.
He has an interest in efficient and effective ways of addressing the mental health treatment gap, especially in the primary care setting or in HIV infection, or for adolescents and young people.
He is a Research Fellow in the Youth Resilience Unit, and also a Global Health Research Fellow at the Unit for Social and Community Psychiatry and the Principal Investigator on an ESRC-Newton grant exploring mental health interventions in schools in post-conflict Colombia and considering the COVID pandemic.