Research Team

Angela Henricks, Ph.D.

Dr. Henricks is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at WSU. She completed her PhD in Experimental Psychology at WSU in 2016, where she worked with Dr. Ryan McLaughlin. Dr. Henricks then spent four years as a post-doc in the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College, working with Dr. Alan Green. Her work has consistently focused on identifying the neurobiological mechanisms that drive substance use and mental illness, with a specific emphasis on sex differences in vulnerability.

Email: angela.henricks@wsu.edu
Office: JT 313
Phone: (509) 335-8946

Skylar Nicholson, M.S.

Skylar joined the BAR lab in Fall 2022. She completed her B.A. in Psychology at the University of New Mexico in 2022, where she worked as an undergraduate research assistant for Dr. Nathan Pentkowski. She is now working towards her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology. Her current research interests include investigating how factors such as prenatal infection might impact later life alcohol consumption and brain development in rodents.

Wendy Gillespie, B.S.

Wendy joined the BAR Lab in Fall 2025. She earned her B.S. in Psychology from the University of Oregon in 2022, where she worked as an undergraduate research assistant under Dr. Don Tucker at the Brain Electrophysiology Laboratory (BEL). After graduating, she worked as a systems neuroscience laboratory manager for Dr. Santiago Jaramillo, while also continuing to work at BEL. She is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology, where her research focuses on identifying the cellular underpinnings of local field potentials and examining the role of the prefrontal–cerebellar circuit in motivated behavior, studied through models of alcohol consumption in rodents.