Dr. Aspiras is an experimental psychologist with training in social and health psychology. She earned her PhD in experimental psychology at the University of Toledo (2019) in the Integrating Social Psychology and Health in Research lab. Upon graduating, she served as faculty for several years at Clarke University in Dubuque, Iowa, where she co-developed and co-led the Dubuque Youth & Family Resilience Project, an interdisciplinary research project that examined the factors predicting well-being among families during the COVID-19 pandemic. She joined the C.S. Mott Department of Public Health in 2022 as a research associate, working on various community-engaged, disparities-focused research projects. In 2023, she was awarded a three-year postdoctoral fellowship through the American Cancer Society to further her research and training in community-engaged cancer disparities research. 

Her research bridges social psychology and public health to address psychosocial barriers to cancer prevention and to develop targeted health communication and intervention strategies that reduce cancer disparities in underserved communities. She is especially passionate about increasing human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination rates to reduce HPV-related cancer risk and disparities. Moving forward, she intends to continue building upon her ongoing cancer prevention work in Michigan while also developing new interdisciplinary collaborations and pursuing new research directions that can improve cancer prevention and outcomes. She is especially interested in expanding her work to explore novel intervention settings for HPV vaccination, such as pediatric dental clinics, and in working more closely with community stakeholders to address individual, provider, and system-level barriers to HPV vaccination.