curriculum vitae // request a rec letter

Every day, we look out into the world and see scenes of people in motion, and make sense of these scenes by appealing to their underlying causes. We appreciate that other people have mental lives, including desires, percepts, and beliefs, and we also understand that people are solid bodies, who can exert forces and navigate themselves through a physical world. How do our minds and brains get so much meaning from this input, and how we grow to this knowledge over development?

I am committed to making science more open (transparent, reproducible, and inclusive). Part of this commitment is providing high-quality mentorship to students from all backgrounds. As a first-generation immigrant to the US who stumbled into science, I am aware that without supportive mentors, and a great deal of personal development, I would have stumbled out. Here is a working draft of my mentorship philosophy.

Minjae Kim (2023 - )

I'm interested in how we reason about people's mental states and traits, generate explanations for unexpected events, and use our models of people and situations to predict future events. I received my BA in Neuroscience from Swarthmore College in 2015, and my PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience from Boston College in 2023. 

Joseph Outa [website] (2023 - )

Humans have a remarkable ability to reason and behave flexibly in the physical and social world. This stems from our ability to form abstract representations rooted in intuitive, domain-specific, causal knowledge about objects, agents, and their properties. I am interested in using behavioral and computational methods to study how this knowledge emerges in infancy and childhood.

Tal Boger [website] (2023 - )

I’m officially advised by Chaz Firestone, but also collaborate with the Liu Lab. I am interested in studying how the mind separates content and form, especially as it relates to how we understand the complexity of the world around us.

Keyu (Amber) Liu (2024 - )

I am broadly interested in how children and infants understand, reason, and learn about the world in relation to their social cognitive development. I received my B.A. in Psychology with an additional major in Data Science from Smith College in 2024.

Sam Maione (2023 - )

My biggest interest is where developmental cognitive neuroscience and clinical research intersect. Many neuropsychiatric disorders have developmental roots, and I wish to understand why these disorders form and how treatment can change alongside development. I received my BS in Integrative Neuroscience from Binghamton University in 2023, and hope to go on someday to attain an MD/PhD, eventually working as a researcher with part time work as a psychiatrist. 

Thalia Mason (2024 - )

I’ve always enjoyed working with kids, and I’m interested in learning more about what elements of learning are intuitive to children and how we can apply this to education and parenting. In the future, I hope to contribute to our understanding of child development and pursue a career as a pediatrician.

Arushi Devgun (2024 - )

I have always been curious about how children interact with the physical world and in social settings. I am interested in the underlying neural mechanisms of these interactions, specifically how children develop the ability to reason with and process external stimuli.

Nardos Eshetu (2024 - )

Elizabeth Sosa (2024 - )