Lillian Polanco-Roman is an Assistant Professor of Psychology (Clinical/Counseling subprogram) and the director of the Mental Health Equity Lab at NYU Steinhardt's Department of Applied Psychology. Dr. Polanco-Roman is also a licensed clinical psychologist. She obtained her PhD in Psychology at The Graduate Center and City College of New York, CUNY, her MA in Psychology at Hunter College, CUNY, and her BA in Psychology at Fordham University. She also completed a T32 Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Dept. of Psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and completed her psychology internship at Montefiore Medical Center.
Dr. Polanco-Roman's teaching and research interests are in the intersecting areas of cultural psychology, quantitative research methods, mental health, and youth development. Her research aims to investigate the sociocultural context of the development of mental health problems, particularly suicide risk, as well as in the promotion of mental well-being among racially/ethnically minoritized and immigrant adolescents and young adults. By focusing on racism-based trauma and studying experiences of racism across a range of dimensions and settings, her research has advanced our understanding of potential causes underlying the racial/ethnic disparities in suicide risk among ethnoracially minoritized youth.
Prior to joining NYU, Dr. Polanco-Roman was faculty at The New School. She was recently a visiting fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She was also a Health Equity Scholar for Action, an early career development program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Her work, which has been supported by federal and private foundation grants, has received national media attention, including Time Magazine and the NYTimes.