Michelle Loher is a doctoral student, funded by a 4-year Swiss National Science Doc.CH grant, at the Risk & Resilience laboratory at the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development. Her research focuses on developmental aspects of substance use among adolescents and young adults.

Michelle received her first Bachelor’s degree in Nursing at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW). She subsequently received a second Bachelor’s degree and then a Master’s degree in Psychology at the University of Zurich (UZH).

During her studies she worked as a nurse in a home for elderly people and tutored undergraduate students in the interactive proseminar (IPS) (providing skills for a successful psychology degree and career entry). In her master’s thesis, she examined longitudinal associations between cannabis use and violence from adolescence to early adulthood with data drawn from the “Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood (z-proso)”.

After obtaining her MSc she worked as a research assistant for 1.5 years at the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development (e.g., Zurich Youth Surveys).