Grace DiDomenico

Grace DiDomenico is a research professional with over eight years of experience managing large-scale, multidisciplinary clinical and translational research studies in child and adolescent mental health. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from West Chester University of Pennsylvania, graduating with high academic distinction (overall GPA 3.8) and was recognized as the Most Outstanding Student in the Psychology Department, the department’s highest undergraduate honor. During this time, she also received competitive college-wide recognition and grant support for high-impact undergraduate research.
Following graduation, Grace began her research career as a Research Coordinator at West Chester University before joining Brandeis University as a Lab Manager. There, she led all phases of study operations across multiple longitudinal protocols, including IRB submissions, participant recruitment and retention, database development, and structured clinical interviewing (SCID). She played a central role in launching and completing a two-year longitudinal study with exceptional retention rates and developed custom data systems and clinical assessment tools used by thousands of patients.
Since 2019, Grace has served as a Clinical Research Study Lead at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she oversees protocol development and regulatory management for numerous federally funded and institutional studies. Her work spans IRB strategy, grant support, operational infrastructure, electronic data capture systems, and innovative remote biospecimen collection methods. She has collaborated on more than a dozen peer-reviewed publications in leading psychiatric and public health journals and manages a growing research team that includes analysts, trainees, and clinical fellows.
In the Barzi Lab, Grace supports the design, implementation, and scaling of research focused on youth mental health, suicide prevention, and the social and environmental determinants of psychiatric risk and resilience. Her work centers on building rigorous, compliant research infrastructure, translating complex data into actionable insight, and advancing interdisciplinary projects that bridge clinical care, data science, and population-level mental health research.