Postdoctoral Scholars

Education and Training

Overview

Sara Schneider, PhD, MS, is a cognitive scientist by training and a postdoctoral scholar at the UC Merced Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center (NCPC). Her current research focuses on investigating community- and policy-level factors related to tobacco and cannabis use and cessation through community-engaged research in the San Joaquin Valley (SJV).

Her work applies a community-engaged and mixed-methods approach to addressing tobacco-related inequities in rural communities like the SJV. As part of a funded Tobacco-Related Disease Research (TRDRP) study (MPIs: Dr. Dorie Apollonio, UC San Francisco; Dr. Anna Song, UC Merced, TRDRP #T33IR6471), she conducted a quantitative survey with San Joaquin Valley community members, and also conducted qualitative interviews with SJV pharmacists to understand their knowledge, attitudes, and experiences with pharmacist-furnished nicotine therapy replacement (NRT). She has also written on the health consequences of cannabis for youth, and is currently writing about criteria needed to improve cannabis marketplaces (e.g., federally regulating product testing and descheduling cannabis to allow scientists to conduct ecologically sound research).

With a multidisciplinary background, she earned her PhD and MS in Cognitive and Information Sciences from UC Merced, where she investigated speech structure (i.e., hierarchical temporal structure) and the alignment of levels of speech between speakers (i.e., complexity matching) in the contexts of infant vocalization development, joint task performance, and Spanish-English bilingual conversations. Displaying a strong commitment to pedagogy, she has mentored 23 undergraduate UC Merced students and received UC Merced’s Outstanding Teaching Award in 2018 for her efforts. Her long-term goals are to reduce health disparities relating to tobacco and cannabis in the SJV and other rural regions, while continuing to mentor students in their academic and professional development.

Publications:

1. Schneider S, Durazo A, Rodriguez S, Chan-Golston AM, Wakefield T, Halliday DM, Tracy D,  Song AV,  Apollonio DE. "Perceptions of pharmacist-furnished nicotine replacement therapy among participants who smoke in California" Journal of the American Pharmacists Association, 2025, Vol. 65, Issue 5
2. Halliday DM, Espinoza S, Schneider S, Steinberg J. "Cannabis use in youth: Consumption and health consequences." Encycl Child Adolesc Health. 2023;415-427. doi: doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-818872-9.00153-9
3. Schneider SC. "Hierarchical temporal structure and convergence in development, performance, and bilingualism" (Publication no. 28716628) [Doctoral dissertation]. University of California, Merced; 2021. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
4. Lopez L, Moorman K, Schneider S, Baker M, Holbrook C. "Morality is relative: Anger, disgust and aggression as contingent responses to sibling versus stranger harm". Emotion. 2020;21(2):376-390. doi:10.1037/emo0000707; PMID: 31829720
5. Schneider S, Ramirez-Aristizabal AG, Gavilan C, Kello CT. "Complexity matching and lexical matching in monolingual and bilingual conversations." Biling Lang Cogn. 2020;23(4):845-857. doi:10.1017/S1366728919000774

Education and Training

Overview

Leia Belt, PhD, MA, is a sociologist and social epidemiologist currently serving as a postdoctoral scholar at the Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center (NCPC) at the University of California, Merced. She is one of the lead investigators on a community-centered data dashboard project designed to explore policy- and community-level factors influencing tobacco use in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

Dr. Belt’s research is rooted in a community engaged, Du Boisian framework, employing mixed methods to investigate the legacy of social and structural harm and the spatial dynamics shaping reproductive and aging health in rural communities. Her long-term goal is to advance policy-relevant, community-informed scholarship by developing innovative and accessible data tools that address the social and structural determinants of health, particularly in underserved rural communities.

Prior to her role at NCPC, Dr. Belt was a postdoctoral researcher on the Du Bois Science Education Research Visualization and Empowerment (SERVE) Project in the Department of Sociology at UC Merced, where she worked within the Higher Education, Race, and Equity (HERE) Lab and Sociology of Health (SHE). She also held appointments as a Fellow in the Ignite the Spark Scholars Program (ISSP) at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and with UC Merced’s Housing, Opportunity, and Place (HOPe) Lab. Across these experiences, Dr. Belt has remained committed to achieving health equity, mentoring students, and collaborating with communities to drive meaningful and lasting change.