Dr. Rachel Siciliano is a Research Assistant Professor in the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center Division at the Medical University of South Carolina and a licensed clinical psychologist whose research and clinical work center on trauma-exposed youth. She earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Vanderbilt University, where she also completed her clinical internship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She holds a B.A. in Neuroscience from Colgate University. Dr. Siciliano completed her postdoctoral fellowship at MUSC’s National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center (NCVRTC), supported by the NIMH-funded T32 program, Translational Research Training in Traumatic Stress Across the Lifespan (T32MH018869).
Her research program focuses on the biological, affective, and cognitive processes that contribute to both resilience and risk for psychopathology among youth exposed to trauma and adversity. Specifically, she examines autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning, emotion regulation, and threat reactivity, with an emphasis on identifying neurobiological mechanisms involved in the development of posttraumatic stress and related disorders. Her work also explores how family and contextual factors shape stress reactivity and coping/emotion regulation strategies in children and adolescents. A central goal of her research is to identify biobehavioral mechanisms and individual-level predictors of treatment response to advance the personalization and optimization of trauma-focused, evidence-based therapies (EBTs).
Clinically, Dr. Siciliano is trained in several gold-standard EBTs for PTSD, including Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Prolonged Exposure (PE), and Written Exposure Therapy (WET). She is deeply committed to trauma-informed, measurement-based care, translational science, and the effective dissemination and implementation of EBTs.