People

Debra Umberson (Project Director) is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center on Aging and Population Sciences (CAPS) at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also holds a courtesy appointment in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work. Her current research, supported by the National Institute on Aging, focuses on the impact of relationships on health across the life course, and gender, sexuality, and racial variation in relationship and health experiences. Her recent publications focus on how spouses influence each other’s mental and physical health, as well as their health habits—and how these dynamics operate differently for men and women in same-sex and different-sex marriages. Umberson is an elected Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and 2022 recipient of a MERIT Award from the National Institute on Aging. She is also the recipient of numerous awards from the American Sociological Association, including the 2015 Matilda White Riley Distinguished Scholar Award for research on aging, the 2016 Leonard I. Pearlin Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociological Study of Mental Health, and the 2020 Leo G. Reeder Award for Distinguished Contributions to Medical Sociology.

Dr. Rin Reczek (Co-Investigator) is a Professor of Sociology at The Ohio State University and Co-Director for the Center for Aging Families (CAF). She is a family demographer and qualitative methodologist whose research accounts for the full complexity of family ties, with specific attention to how family dynamics and structure shape health and well-being in mid- and later-life  She is especially interested in how the multifaceted dynamics of parent-adult child ties, parenthood, and intimate relationships change across the life course. Dr. Reczek is well-known for her national media engagement on family estrangement and no-contact family relationships, as well as for her work on sexual minority families, aging, and health. Dr. Reczek is Co-Director of the Center for Aging Families, an NIA-funded aging center at Ohio State University, and is leading a R01 National Institutes of Health-funded project examining how childbearing biographies (e.g., age at first and last birth, parity) shapes midlife health. 

Sara Mernitz is a Research Scientist in the Population Research Center and the Center on Aging and Population Sciences. Her research broadly focuses on social relationships and their longitudinal associations with mental and physical health. Drawing from interdisciplinary perspectives from across the social sciences, she focuses on how romantic involvement shapes health and whether these processes vary by gender and sexuality. Her research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health and published in journals such as Demography, Journal of Marriage and Family, Demographic Research, and Journal of Family Psychology. On a personal note, Sara enjoys spending time with her family, reading, and traveling.

Jaime (Feng-Yuan) Hsu is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and a Population Research Center (PRC) Graduate Research Trainee. Jaime’s research interests center on how intimate and family relationships shape health and other inequalities for gender and sexual minority populations over their life course. Outside of academia, Jaime is a home cook and a kitty foster parent.

Asya Saydam is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and a Population Research Center (PRC) Graduate Research Trainee. Asya’s research interests are at the intersection of family demography, gender, and work, with a specific focus on marital and household dynamics and health outcomes over the life course. For Asya, playing soccer and being a flaneuse in the city are the major sources of leisure.