Biography
Dr. Regilda “Rea” Romero was born and raised in the Philippines. In 1999, she moved to California and worked at the Early Childhood Partial Hospitalization Program at the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA providing behavior therapy to children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). While being employed at UCLA, Dr. Romero volunteered as a research assistant at the Anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Clinic as well as coached at Special Olympics. In 2002, she moved to the San Francisco area to attend graduate school at Palo Alto University where she pursued the Child Assessment Track and the Neuropsychology Certificate program. As a graduate student, she worked at the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit - Palo Alto Veterans Affairs and Depression Research Clinic - Stanford University as a clinical research assistant providing neuropsychological assessment to adults. In July 2008, she completed her pediatric neuropsychology internship at Virginia Beach Cities Public School, which is an APA-accredited site. In August 2010, she completed her two-year postdoctoral fellowship in pediatric neuropsychology (in accordance with Houston Conference Guidelines) in the Division of Pediatric Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota Medical Center/Amplatz Children’s Hospital (UMN), where she provided neuropsychological diagnostic and assessment services for infants to young adults with developmental delays, complex learning and/or behavioral disorders (i.e., medical, neurological, and neuropsychiatric in etiology). Additionally, she completed a 6-month evaluation rotation at UMN’s Autism Spectrum and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Clinic. Clinically, she has 4 years of experience providing individual and group psychotherapy to multicultural population of adults and children with different diagnoses at various settings. In terms of research, her interest is in neurodevelopmental disorders and neuropsychology of poverty. She is currently involved in two projects at UMN’s Center for Neurobehavioral Center (CNBD). Her research at CNBD focuses on neurodevelopmental effects of medical conditions and environmental factors (e.g., low SES). She presented her work on the neurodevelopmental effects of Human Immunodefiency Virus (HIV) on preschool-aged Ugandan children at an international conference as well as at the Fourth Annual Pediatric Research, Education and Scholarship Symposium (PRESS) at UMN Medical Center, where she received the award for outstanding research by a postdoctoral student. She recently presented her other research on developing a longitudinal protocol for neurodevelopmental assessments in children under 5 in developing countries at the National Academy of Neuropsychology 31st Annual Conference in Florida. She is currently preparing both manuscripts for publications.