Christiana Provencal received her BA degree in Social and Personality Psychology from Rhode Island College 1990, continuing on to obtain a Master's Degree in the same program in 1992. She was hired by Brown's Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior as a project coordinator in Feburary of 1992 working with Dr. Tracie Shea. Within the DPBH she coordinated, monitored and supervised research staff on several studies including the Primary Care/Mental Study, the Collaborative Depression Study, and Harvard/Brown Anxiety Project. She also trained other research staff/groups on the administration of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM IV (SCID). In 1995, Christiana was offered a position in Brown's department of Psychology where she directed a large scale longitudinal study of adults with Learning Disabilities, working with Dr. Lewis Lipsitt and Dr Stephen Buka. In 1999 she began working as a Senior Project Coordinator on a 5 year study funded by the National Cancer Institute, desiged to assess issues/consequences/implications related to nicotine dependence, inutero exposure to nicotine, and associated public health issues. Christiana had worked closely with many investigators associated with this project, known as the TTURC project (Transdiciplanary Tobacco Use in Research Centers), for 5 years, including Dr Stephen Buka, Dr Melissa Clark and Dr Raymond Niaura. This project was recenlty renewed for any addtional five years. Christiana moved to the Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research in October of 2004 and continues to work closely with the investigators on this project, especially with Dr. Clark and Dr. Buka and is currently preparing for another 5 years of field work, data collection, and coordination of cohort and sample activities.