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, PhD [website] (2023 - )

NSF SBE Postdoctoral Fellow

I’m interested in how we explain, evaluate, and draw inferences from people's actions and interactions. How are these processes supported by mentalizing and physical reasoning, and how are they affected by motivation? My research uses multiple approaches (behavioral, neuroimaging, developmental, computational) to explore these questions.

I received my PhD in Psychology & Neuroscience from Boston College, and my BA in Neuroscience from Swarthmore College. I am currently supported by an NSF SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.

Qiong Cao, PhD [website] (2024 - )

Postdoctoral Associate

I’m interested in the representations and computations that underpin reasoning and learning, especially in early childhood. My research spans various age groups and topics, focusing on key questions such as: How do infants and children decide what information to attend to? How do the developing minds interpret unexpected events? And how does explanation influence reasoning and learning?

Currently, I am a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT, co-advised by Josh Tenenbaum and Shari Liu. I completed my Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins, working with Lisa Feigenson. Before that, I obtained my M.A. at NYU and B.S. at Zhejiang University in China.

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 [website] (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.

Ziwen Wang (2025 - )

I am officially advised by Marina Bendy and am thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate with the Liu Lab. I’m interested in understanding how humans intuitively reason about both physical and social events, the role of sensory experience in the processing of these events, as well as the underlying neural mechanisms. I earned my B.A. in Neuroscience and Behavior with a minor in Educational Studies from Vassar College.

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.

Sam Maione [website] (2023 - )

I am interested in the way we think about the structured social world. We create new social roles (like "lawyer" or "cashier"), institutions (like "law firm" or "grocery store"), and artifacts (like "gavel" and "dollar") everyday. I aim to understand the cognitive representations deployed when people create, shape, and make sense of the structured social world.

Zixin (Celine) Li (2025 - )

I am fascinated by how humans intuitively process physical and social information from their environment, effortlessly navigating a complex world and building social connections. I aim to explore the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying these abilities.

Jeff (Minjae) Kim (2026 - )

I am interested in the social and developmental foundations of discriminatory behavior in people; more specifically, how people come to internalize social lenses and biases like race as they develop cognitively. How do children, who seem to show no specific preference for race in their early infancy, come to develop racial preferences as they grow up?

Fathia Rahman (2026 - )

I want to explore how physical and biological factors influence psychological development from a young age. Moreover, I want to understand how these influences varies across communities and how this may help in understanding the psychological impact disparities in resources have on children globally.

Celina Stodder (2026 - )

I am interested in how people develop cognitive and social frameworks that underly how they interpret, evaluate, and justify human behavior. Specifically, I hope to explore how these frameworks inform an individual's explanations for their own and others' actions, and how they are are shaped by environments that evolve as we age. I am particularly interested in what we can learn from brains in the childhood stage (rapid growth), and how our perceptions of these frameworks have been influenced by media.