Student Feature: Rasmus Grydehoej

Meet one of our threat assessment students at the PPC! 

We spoke with Rasmus Grydehoej whose research interests are currently centered around the identification, assessment, and management of targeted violence, with a particular interest in furthering the empirical understanding of the warning behaviors that precede violent behavior.

About Rasmus

Prior to pursuing higher education in psychology, Rasmus (he/him/his) was born and raised in Denmark. His decision to pursue higher education in the United States was grounded in the belief that the U.S. is the epicenter of psychological research. Rasmus is a first-year graduate student in the Clinical Psychology Training Program (CPTP) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). He received his B.S. in Psychology from Grand Valley State University in 2018 and his M.A. in Forensic Psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 2021. During and after obtaining his master’s degree, Rasmus has conducted research on various topics in the forensic psychology realm, including studies on imminent risk rating measures, female sex offenders, taxonomic differences between juvenile sex offenders, sexual grooming and child sex trafficking, U.S. marital rape laws, and offender community re-entry. 

Q&A with Rasmus Grydehoej

  • What brings you to the Public Policy Center?
    My advisor in the CPTP at UNL is Dr. Mario Scalora, who is the director of the Public Policy Center (PPC). As a part of my graduate training, I currently hold a graduate research assistantship at the PPC where I am actively engaged in research on public safety and threat assessment with Dr. Scalora and colleagues.
     
  • What are you most passionate about learning and/or working on? 
    I am increasingly fascinated with the topics surrounding threat assessment. As a result, I am passionate about both learning the research methodologies that underlie this niche area of psychological research and explore topics that can aid the identification, assessment, and management of threats to public safety.
     
  • How do you think this experience will help you work towards your goals for the future? 
    As an individual who is interested in a career in forensic assessment, I believe that my time at the PPC will bolster and develop my research skill set, as well as provide me with exposure to materials and datasets that will progress both my understanding of interest areas and professional development as a doctoral student. Furthermore, I believe that experiences at the PPC will provide practical insights into the processes involved in conducting assessments pertaining to forensic psychology and threat assessment.
     
  • What is something you are passionate about outside of your work as a student? 
    I am passionate about promoting the importance of furthering the general public’s understanding of the scientific process, as well as science in general. I am a passionate proponent of scientific literacy for the public as I believe that the ability to effectively understand science can have positive consequences at both the individual and societal level.