Name: Prof. Dr. Matt J. Gray
Affiliations: Department of Psychology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA
Research interests: sexual violence prevention; intimate partner violence; traumatic stress

“Sexual Harassment of Cisgender Women University Students: How the Gender Composition of Colleges Relates to Differential Prevalence”
by Natalie Q. Poole, Christopher J. Cannon, Amy L. Gabriel, Emma J. Briles and Matt J. Gray
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2025, 22(7), 1146; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22071146

The following is an interview with Prof. Dr. Matt J. Gray:

1. Congratulations on your recent publication! Could you briefly introduce yourself and your current research focus?
   My name is Matt Gray. I am a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Wyoming, and I study traumatic stress broadly, so I do some combat-related research, as well as treatment and outcome research. But most of what I study is gender violence, sexual assault, domestic violence, sexual harassment prevention, and their impacts and treatment.

2. What initially inspired your research interest in this field?
   When I went to graduate school, I had a lot of different research interests, but I wound up working with somebody who was starting to do a lot of traumatic stress research, and I was just beginning to get broad and general experience with lots of trauma populations and different types of trauma impacts. When I went off to my postdoctoral fellowship at the National Centre for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I was in a VA setting, but it was one of the only VAs at that time that had a women's health science division. So, half of my clinical work was with primarily male combat veterans, but the other half of my clinical work, and, correspondingly, my research work, was with military sexual trauma and types of traumatic events that are more likely to occur to females in military settings. So, I had opportunities to work clinically with both populations, as well as begin to do some research in that area.

3. Did you encounter any significant challenges while conducting your research? If so, how did you overcome them?
   The challenges were fewer than one might expect. While Boston offers numerous trauma research resources and opportunities, the high concentration of researchers often leads to competition for access to the same study populations. In contrast, when I moved to Wyoming—where there was no trauma researcher at the time—gaining clinical and research access to populations affected by trauma, particularly sexual assault, was not especially difficult, due to the widespread prevalence of such cases. This facilitated the study of factors contributing to sexual misconduct and its treatment impacts.

4. What are the most pressing research questions you aim to explore next?
   I'm getting to a point in my career where I kind of let graduate students’ passions come to the fore. And so, if you look at my recent publications, they're all within that umbrella heading of traumatic stress. The stuff that I do with distal colleagues is combat-related. But most of my research focuses on sexual assault and domestic violence, and so we have some folks working on policy implications for sexual violence reporting and prevention. We have some people looking at cultural impacts and cultural variables that influence the exposure to and consequences of sexual misconduct, and those kinds of things. One thing that, of course, I'm really interested in is the prevention of sexual misconduct. You can't work clinically with a population that's been so impacted by those issues and do research related to things like PTSD and other sorts of psychological and emotional trauma and not have an interest in preventing it. So, a lot of what we're doing right now is prevention.

5. What advice would you give to early-career researchers aiming to make an impact on clinical psychology?
   Depending on how early people are in their work, it's important to obviously join research laboratories a lot of times; bright and motivated people will have multiple interests, and sometimes it's not until you get your feet wet in different labs and do different kinds of research in different areas that you can kind of figure out where your passions lie. Pay close attention and don't be afraid to ask questions when you're in research meetings with some people you might be otherwise intimidated by. People who have spent a long time in their careers, including most professors and researchers, really want to help, nurture, and cultivate the next generation of scientists and researchers. So, be sure to ask questions and look for opportunities to pitch in on research and pick the brains of graduate students. If you're in a lab with graduate students, they can kind of talk about the transition from undergrad to graduate school. Those sorts of things; usually by the time people are like early their career in academia, they've already, like, done a lot of work and accessed a lot of populations that are pretty well versed in the enterprise of research, so there's not as much, like, specificity that you can provide as far as how to get started, because they already probably have a running start.
   The one thing that I would say, though, for early career folks, is to be on the lookout for fruitful collaborations with other individuals at the same level and stage in their careers, for ongoing and fruitful collaborations. I think a lot of times when people think of networking and they're encouraged to network, they think it always must be glomming onto, like, some like established prominent researcher in the field. And some of my most productive collaborations over the years were, like, somebody who was an intern with me, and we had shared interests, and we continued to bounce research ideas off each other, and both collect data at our respective institutions, and we both wound up being a lot more productive together than we would have been on our own. So, I think some of the most fruitful collaborations could be with people who have similar interests who are not necessarily like big fish yet, but are doing interesting work.

6. Since IJERPH is an open access journal, how do you think open access publishing benefits authors and the broader research community?
   I believe open access holds significant value. It enables researchers to access cutting-edge findings regardless of their institutional resources, which undoubtedly facilitates the broad dissemination and application of scientific knowledge. That being said, we must also acknowledge the structural challenges involved. Some researchers may face barriers to publishing in open access venues due to funding constraints, limited institutional support, or high article processing charges. Without thoughtful policies that account for these disparities, we risk creating a system that, while promoting wider dissemination of knowledge, may inadvertently exclude valuable contributors.

We sincerely thank Professor Matt Gray for sharing his time and insights with us. His perspectives from his extensive research on traumatic stress, particularly in the realms of gender violence and sexual assault, have been profoundly enlightening. We wish him continued success as he advances his critical work in prevention, treatment, and mentoring the next generation of clinical scientists.