Breanna Bullard

Research Area: Clinical Science

Fun fact: I have played the alto sax in classical bands and ensembles for 11 years!

I'm interested in the impact of neurodegenerative diseases on emotional functioning of persons with dementia, and how these changes in emotional functioning affect the biopsychosocial well-being of their familial caregivers.

Megan Chan

Research Area: Clinical Science

Fun fact: I am a tea person and I do not drink coffee, except Vietnamese coffee :)

My research interest lies between culture, emotion socialization and parent-child relationships in immigrant families.

Christopher Crawford

Research Area: Social-Personality

Fun fact: Before pursuing an education and career as a research psychologist, I was a high school music teacher.

My research focuses on how aspects of an individual’s emotional experience—such as emotion regulation, beliefs about emotions, and emotional awareness—both develop and influence psychosocial adjustment across the lifespan. I am particularly interested in examining the dynamic relations between these factors as they occur in daily life, with an emphasis on how best to measure and model these processes.

Regina N Ebo

Research Area: Social-Personality

Fun fact: I enjoy reading YA novels.

I'm interested in exploring the connections between culture, emotions, and empathy.

Victoria Keating

Research Area: Developmental

Fun fact: I hate cilantro. Can't stand it.

My research interests revolve around how children's social environments affect their social cognition, particularly intergroup cognition. I also want to look at the effects of diversity and how this may be defined in different ways.

Evan Orticio

Research Area: Developmental

Fun fact: When I was 11, I made stop motions with my Webkinz on YouTube. I somehow had several hundred followers.

Broadly, I'm interested in the domain-general learning and attentional mechanisms that guide young humans' interactions with their world. How might these fundamental mechanisms interact with learners' developing knowledge, cognitive capacities, and interests?

Alexis Pracar

Research Area: Cognitive Neuroscience

Fun fact: I have a twin sister!

My research interests include the localization of singing the brain, speech production models, and the neurological underpinnings of rhythm and melody as they relate to language.

Albert Jiaxu Qü

Research Area: Behavioral Systems & Neuroscience

Fun fact: I like to eat hot dogs without any relish.

My research investigates how to model and study brain computation through imaging and behavioral tasks, how dopamine affects striatal circuits in terms of decision making, motor functions and how adversity during development might adversely affect the circuits.

Erika Roach

Research Area: Clinical Science

Fun fact: I was a dancer on a Filipino game show for a week.

Broadly speaking, my research interests lie at the intersection of racial and cultural identity, early life stress, emotion regulation, and developmental psychopathology.

Natalie Samuels

Research Area: Clinical Science

Fun fact: Although I grew up in sunny Texas, I was a competitive figure skater through much of my upbringing.

I'm interested in exploring whether and how social context can be used to reliably predict state psychopathology at the individual level.

Sierra Semko

Research Area: Social-Personality

Fun fact: I grew up in a very small town in Ohio (less than 1,000 people!)

My research is aimed to better understand how individuals contribute to systemic racism and injustice in educational and health settings, and to create interventions to mitigate differential outcomes for populations affected by inequality.

Nirupika Sharma

Research Area: Social-Personality

Fun fact: I love artichoke pizza

I am interested in studying intergroup relations and the influences of group identity on self & social perception.

Jiyoung Song

Research Area: Clinical Science

Fun fact: Costco is my happy place.

My research aims to create a personalized modular treatment protocol by identifying and leveraging individual differences in the formation and maintenance of psychopathology, specifically in the context of external stressors such as homophobia experienced by the LGBTQ+ community. I am also interested in studying how to best disseminate evidence-based treatments to community health clinics outside of research settings.

Tianhe Wang

Research Area: Cognitive Neuroscience

Fun fact: I like to post penguin emoticons before exams.

I am interested in the flexibility of human learning. In particular, I investigate how humans apply different learning systems, e.g., reinforcement learning, cognitive strategies, and implicit adaptation, to acquire motor skills.

Emma Ward-Griffin

Research Area: Social-Personality

Fun fact: I've been watching shows about the Bay Area to prepare for Berkeley (Monk, Full[er] House, Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, Parenthood...).

I am interested in discrimination, the development of prejudice, and intervention research. I investigate the representation, misrepresentation, and invisibility of marginalized groups and the consequences of this representation.

Eunice Yiu

Research Area: Developmental

Fun fact: I run a food account on Instagram @eatwithyiu with my sister (who also studies here at UC Berkeley).

I am excited to study how children learn about their environments (spatial, social, etc.), formulate hypotheses and develop reasoning from a young age. How can the underlying mechanisms of their exploratory behaviors be modelled to help inform and optimize learning in both humans and machines?