Lab Alumni
Apoorva Shivaram received her MA in Social Sciences in 2017 with a focus on Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. Her research examined the role of deictic linking gestures as a tool in promoting children's analogical reasoning. her current interests include the role of analogical reasoning during learning within a classroom and everyday contexts. She received her BA in Psychology Honors from Christ University, India in 2015. She is continuing her education by pursuing a PhD in Psychology at Northwestern University starting in Fall 2018.
Daniel Byrne received his MA in the Division of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago with a focus in Comparative Human Development. Daniel received his BS Summa cum Laude in Psychology and Communication from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016. His prior research and professional experience include working as a research assistant for the University of Chicago Medicine's Thirty Million Words Initiative, the University of Illinois Human Attention Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Defense project on military couples and families post-deployment. The diverse experiences provided the basis of his current research interests in the social cognitive processes involved in attention socialization and relational reasoning, interpersonal communication and cognition, and narrative in learning contexts.
Sean Zheng is a graduate from the MA Program of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. His master thesis focused on how gestures improve children's analogical reasoning and how it is manifested in memory. Currently he is doing followup studies to gain further insight of how external aids could help children conquer their internal cognitive difficulties and induce better learning. He is continuing his education by pursing a PhD in Psychology at Northwestern University starting in Fall 2018.
Tyler Warner received his BA in Psychology with honors at the University of Chicago in 2018. He has been in the lab for three years, and has conducted a thesis project interested in exploring differences in perception and gender in elementary math education. He is now attending Pennsylvania State University for a PhD in Clinical Psychology, with interest in studying and improving the educational and life outcomes of at-risk youth.
Kreshnik Begolli received his PhD in Education from the University of California, Irvine in 2014. Motivated to understand how humans learn and impart knowledge and the desire to advance science and education, Kreshnik's research area alternates between the laboratory and the classroom. By blurring the line between the two, Kreshnik's research draws primarily from cognitive research in analogical reasoning. As an IES postdoctoral fellow at Temple he hopes to reveal the links between analogy making, math cognition, and spatial thinking - in hopes to discover effective instructional strategies leading to conceptual, generalizable knowledge in mathematics.
Ellen Klostermann Wallace received her BA in Biology and Psychology from Northwestern University. Her undergraduate research focused on EEG and fMRI studies of implicit memory. Ellen received her PhD in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009. During her graduate studies, Ellen conducted neuroimaging studies to explore the role of the parietal lobe in memory retrieval, as well as behavioral studies investigating the effect of emotion on memory. After receiving her PhD, Ellen worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley where she investigated the relationship between dopamine levels and fMRI activity in working memory networks in older and younger adults. After moving to Chicago, Ellen taught in Psychology Department at the University of Chicago and later managed clinical trials at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Ellen is current working as a Clinical Research Coordinator at Rush University Hospital.
Alanna O'Brien received her MA in Social Sciences with a focus on social psychology at the University of Chicago. Her research examined the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic incentives on consumer behavior and on academic performance in high school students. Her current research interests include exploring such topics as motivation, goal pursuit, self-regulation, and judgement and decision-making. She received her BS in Psychology and History from Florida State University in 2011. After graduating from FSU, she taught 10th grade chemistry; an experience which inspired her current research interests. She is continuing her education at Northwestern University in the Fall of 2016.
Nina Simms was a post-doctoral scholar in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. She is interested in how children and adults learn and reason about relational information. Her research investigate how executive functions, prior experience and knowledge, and representational tools like relational language contribute to the development of relational thinking. With Dr. Lindsey Richland, she explored how these issues inform mathematics education. Nina graduated from the University of Michigan in 2004 with a BA in Psychology and Linguistics and received her PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Northwestern University in 2013, where she worked with Dr. Dedre Gentner. Nina is currently working as a post-doctoral scholar at Northwestern University.
Leah Hirschfeld received her A.B. in Psychology with honors from the University of Chicago in 2015. Her honor's thesis explored the relationship between parental scaffolding and children's creativity through analogical reasoning. Leah managed Dr. Richland's Learning Lab at the university of Chicago from 2013 to 2015. She currently works as a Management Trainee on the executive track at McMaster-Carr in New Jersey.
Carey DeMichelis received her MA in Social Science from the University of Chicago in 2011 and her BA in Psychology from the University of Colorado in 2010. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Developmental Psychology and Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her doctorate research focuses on moral development, personal identity development, and resiliency in hospitalized children. Carey managed Dr. Richland's Learning Lab at the University of Chicago from 2011 to 2013 where she coordinated research on analogical reasoning and executive function in math and science classrooms. While at Chicago, she also worked with Dr. Jean Decety's Social Cognitive neuroscience lab on the development of moral decision-making, empathy, and prosocial behavior across cultures.
Janice Hansen, completed her doctorate at the University of California, Irvine in 2013. Janice is interested in the use of visual representations in science instruction. In particular, Janice investigates how learners draw connections across conceptually connected visual representations. Additionally, she has conducted research into how learners make sense of science representations in informal environments. Janice graduated with a Bachelor of Social Work degree at Arizona State University. She has also holds Master of Arts degrees in Educational Psychology from California State University Long Beach, and in Education from the University of California, Irvine.
Marly Santora is a second-year undergraduate student majoring in Comparative Human Development and Linguistics at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include cultural and linguistic effects on early language and math learning. Previously, she was a research assistant at the Berkeley Early Learning Lab under the guidance of Ruthe Foushee and Dr. Fei Xu. Outside of the lab, she enjoys working to spread access to computer science education to girls in the Hyde Park community.