Lab Alumni
Su Thway is a 5th year student in University of California, Irvine, double majoring in Education Science and Psychological Science. While Su is still exploring her options, her current research interests include how children think and their behaviors evolved from parenting styles and the family environment as well as broadly in social psychology of how individuals behave differently in the presence of others. In addition, She hopes to follow her passion in Photography, baking, and Interior Design as her side hobbies.
Nicole Kerber is a fourth-year undergraduate student pursuing a BA in psychology at the University of California, Irvine. While still deciding what she wants to focus on in the future, her current research interests are in a wide variety of subjects. Her favorites include how adults and children learn and behave differently, cognitive psychology, and even forensic psychology. After graduating in June 2021, she hopes to start working for a few years to keep exploring her psychological interests until she feels it’s time to go forward with a master’s degree.
Betty Feng is a fourth-year undergraduate student at UC Irvine majoring in Psychological Science. She is still exploring different topics, but some of her research interests include how children's development, upbringings, and emotions affect their learning as well as how culture influences parenting styles and thus children's development. After graduating in July 2021, she plans to take at least a gap year to gain patient care experience in preparation for physician assistant school. She is interested in specializing in psychiatry, pediatrics, or family medicine in the PA profession.
Shelby Marland graduated from the University of California, Irvine in 2020 with a Master of Arts in Teaching and a Multiple Subject Teaching Credential. Previously, she obtained her B.A. in Education, Communities, and Organizations and a minor in Diversity from the University of Washington in 2019. Shelby has had multiple opportunities to work with a variety of students across contexts. Throughout her teaching experiences, she taught all subject matters and has specifically enjoyed working with students on mathematical concepts and reading/writing units. Shelby spent part of her undergraduate degree researching student engagement strategies. During her graduate degree, she studied the importance of using norms, trust, and power in the classroom to fuel math based discussions to lead to a deeper understanding of strategies and mathematical concepts.
Maya Joyce received her BA in Applied Psychology and Human Development from Boston College in 2018. While there she minored in Special Education and Women's and Gender Studies. The focus of most of her undergraduate research was on youth purpose development and the effects of mentoring relationships. Her senior honor's thesis was a study of the purpose development of youth in Tanzania. Maya's current interests include developmental and educational psychology, specifically in a cross-cultural context as well as how an individual's environment and relationships impact all parts of their life.
Lauren Farias is a current post-baccalaureate student in UCI's School of Social Ecology, Department of Psychological Science. She completed her bachelor's at the Ohio State University in art and design. She plans to apply for Ph.D. programs this coming fall in School Psychology. She's interested in school engagement in underserved populations and its relation to middle childhood and adolescent mental health.
Kelly Trezise is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. Dr. Trezise investigates the relationships between cognition and emotion, and the consequences of these relationships for problem solving and learning. Much of her work explores mathematics anxiety and its relationship with problem solving. Dr. Trezise also characterizes general and mathematical cognitive development, particularly in the context of arithmetic and algebra. She also examines how educational technology and cognition interact during learning. Dr. Trezise uses a variety of analytical methods, including finite mixture models, to examine processes that contribute to learning and development. Dr. Trezise received her PhD in Psychological Science from the University of Melbourne in 2015. | Website: kellytrezise.com
Rebecca Frausel is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago. Dr. Frausel is broadly interested in the cognitive and socio-emotional benefits for youth and adolescents of sharing stories of personal experience. In one line of inquiry, she explores the role of early language socialization practices on children's later academic proficiency and outcomes. Specifically, she examines how early exposure to and participation in narrative talk can support the development of children's complex relational thinking and proficiency using decontextualized and academic language. She is also interested in how sharing stories of personal experience can foster empathy development. She utilizes diverse methodologies, from naturalistic parent-child observations in everyday home contexts to lab-based elicitation tasks to in-classroom intervention studies. Dr. Frausel received her PhD from the Development of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago in 2018. | Website | Curriculum Vitae
Emily Lyons is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. Her research examines STEM learning and identity construction in high pressure or threatening learning contexts. This work addresses two overarching questions: (1) how does pressure affect learning and engagement in STEM; and (2) what types of teaching practices and individual protective factors promote learning and contribute to resilience in the face of pressure? Emily Lyons is a former high school science teacher. Her work seeks to bridge research with practice to improve STEM learning, particularly for students whose identities or classroom experiences may lead them to de-identify with STEM.
Lily Ye is a fifth-year PhD student in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. She is interested in language socialization, institutional disclosures, public education, and mixed-methods research. her undergraduate studies were based in linguistic anthropology and culminated in an examination of the discourse of climate skepticism. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 2012 with an AB in linguistics.
Ashley Murphy received her MS in Special Education in 2018 at Dominican University. She also taught special education math and sciences classes as a 2016 Teach for America corps member. As an undergraduate, Ashley received a BA in both Neuroscience and Behavior as well as English. Her undergraduate research was on the use of neuro-cognitive interventions in improving chemotherapy-induced cognitive dysfunction. As a result of her experiences in both neuroscience and special education, Ashley is interested in the cognitive profiles of higher performing and lower performing math students as well as how this understanding can be used to improve learning outcomes for lower performing students. | Curriculum Vitae
Sarin Bonyadi received her BA in Education Sciences at the University of California, Irvine in 2020. Her research interests center around the learning and memory of children, specifically having to do with children in underserved communities. Sarin is starting her first year at UCLA’s M.Ed. program in fall 2020. She plans on teaching in underserved populations after receiving her masters in hopes to be involved in shaping young minds of the future.
Samuela Mouzaoir is a third year undergraduate student at the University of Chicago. She is majoring in Psychology and Comparative Human Development. Her research interests lie at the intersection of race, resilience, and pedagogy, though she is still narrowing her focus. Samuela hopes to pursue a doctorate in Educational Psychology to explore the ways in which psychological perspectives can be applied to education policy in underserved populations.
Michelle Bueno received her BA in Political Science in 2017 at the University of Chicago. Her honors' BA thesis project explored the effects of stereotype threat on African-American high school students' perceptions of themselves, their future success, and their political agency. Michelle hopes to pursue a PhD in Political Science, with a focus on Political Psychology and Critical Race Theory, studying the effects of ace and anxiety in attitudes about politics.
Ruohan Xia received her BA in Psychology with a certificate in Criminal Justice from University of Wisconsin - Madison in 2018. Her undergraduate research focused on the effect of native language on gestural description of past events. Her research interests center around how cultural backgrounds and familial environment interact to influence children's ability to learn. She is eager to pursue a PhD in developmental sciences to explore how to adjust research and educational approaches regarding cultural differences to help children achieve their highest potential. | Curriculum Vitae
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.