SELIN ZEYTINOGLU

I received my PhD in Human Development and Family Studies from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro under the mentorship of Susan Calkins. I am broadly interested in the development of self-regulation (i.e., regulation of emotions, cognition, & behaviors) over the course of childhood. My previous work has focused on how the caregiving context (e.g., caregivers’ own self-regulation, caregivers’ emotional & cognitive support) plays a role in the development of self-regulation in early childhood. In my dissertation work, I examined the development of children’s stress physiology, particularly sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomic nervous system functioning in early childhood. My work revealed systematic differences in children’s autonomic responses toward distinct emotional (i.e., injustice vs. frustrating challenges) and cognitive challenges (i.e., repetitive attention task vs. problem-solving), highlighting the importance of understanding the “context-dependent” nature of autonomic nervous system functioning. My research also showed that distinct profiles of autonomic nervous system functioning differ with respect to self-regulation outcomes, suggesting that children’s stress physiology may contribute to behavioral aspects of regulation. Read Selin’s CV or check out her recent work in Journal of Family Psychology, International Journal of Behavioral Development, and Developmental Psychobiology.

EMILIO VALADEZ

I received my PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Delaware in 2019 under the mentorship of Dr. Bob Simons and completed my pre-doctoral clinical internship at the Charleston Consortium Psychology Internship Program under the mentorship of Dr. Lindsay Squeglia. Broadly, I am interested in early risk factors for psychopathology, such as temperament or early adversity, as well as understanding mechanisms that may moderate or mediate the relationships between early risk and later mental health outcomes. I am especially interested in cognitive control, the ability to monitor our behavior and adapt it to the situation at hand, as one potential factor that may play a role in the risk-psychopathology relationship. In the Child Development Lab and in collaboration with the Section on Development and Affective Neuroscience at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), I am using EEG and fMRI to examine how cognitive control and related patterns of brain connectivity interact with temperament to increase or decrease risk for anxiety difficulties. Read Emilio’s CV or check out his recent publications in Psychophysiology (1, 2).

MARCO MCSWEENEY

I received my PhD in psychology from the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom in 2020 under the supervision of Dr. Liat Levita and Dr. Myles Jones as well as additional mentorship by Professor Markus Reuber. My research has mainly focused on using electroencephalography (EEG) to chart the maturational trajectory of emotion-motor interactions in neurotypical brain development in addition to using structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (sMRI) to better understand how emotion-motor interactions and their structural correlates in the brain may be linked to aberrant motor function and emotion processing in patients experiencing psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. Within the Child Development Lab, my research will mainly focus on examining the role of infant temperament on the development of psychopathology in adolescence as well as developing EEG time-frequency approaches, connectivity analyses and source localization methods.

ENDA TAN

I received my PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of British Columbia in 2021 under the mentorship of Kiley Hamlin. My research background lies at the intersection of early development, social cognition, and cognitive neuroscience. My dissertation examined the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying infants’ responses to prosocial/antisocial scenarios using multiple psychophysiological measures, including electroencephalogram (EEG), electromyography (EMG), electrodermal activity (EDA), eye-tracking, and pupillometry. At the Child Development Lab, my research will focus on examining the neural correlates of action understanding in the first years of life and the long-term effects of young children’s inhibited responses to social versus non-social novelty. Check out Enda’s CV here and his recent publications in Child Development and Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

MARTÍN ANTÚNEZ GARCÍA

I received my PhD in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of La Laguna (Canary Islands, Spain) in 2022. My research focused on using the co-registration of EEG and eye movements to explore the visual cognitive mechanisms in ecologically-valid scenarios, such as natural reading. During my predoctoral training, our first and primary goal was to guarantee a high-quality FRP (Fixation-Related Potentials) signal, which awakened a strong methodological interest. Within the Child Development Lab, I will collaborate with the Healthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) study. Furthermore, we will use multi-modal brain imaging to understand how brain development may be affected by exposure to opioids and other substances (e.g., alcohol, tobacco, cannabis), stressors, trauma, and other significant environmental influences. Check out Martín’s CV here.

DANA KANEL

I received my PhD from King’s College London in 2022. My research there focused on the neural correlates of psychopathology and temperament in children born preterm. I collected and analyzed neuroimaging data using MRI to study the structural and functional connections in the brain. I am now a postdoctoral fellow between the Child Development Lab at UMD and Section on Development and Affective Neuroscience at NIMH, where I continue researching the neural correlates of temperament. I work on the Origin of Infant Temperament (OIT) study, where we work with infants to collect MRI and behavioral data. I am broadly interested in the bidirectional relationship between brain connectivity and temperamental development, especially in the context of an individual’s environment. Check out Dana’s CV here.

SO YEON SHIN

I received my PhD in Education from Harvard University in 2021 under the mentorship of Dr. Meredith Rowe. I am broadly interested in understanding how environmental factors influence children's language and cognitive development, and how such relations may vary across cultures. In my dissertation research, I examined the role that mothers play in shaping children's early language experiences and development in South Korea, with a focus on analyzing linguistic elements of parent-child interactions. Within the Child Development Lab, I will be working on the Healthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) study to examine how perinatal and early environmental factors interact with and influence children's development prior to formal schooling, in addition to continuing to investigate the role of parent-child interactions on early language and cognitive development.  Check out So Yeon’s CV here.

ALYSA HERRERA TAYLOR

I am originally from Phoenix, Arizona, but have been in the DMV area since 2012. During that time I completed my bachelors, masters, and PhD in developmental psychology with a minor in neuropsychology at Howard University under the mentorship of Dr. Debra Roberts and Dr. Jules Harrell. My general research interests include ethnic/racial identity, cultural socialization, and psychological and physiological outcomes for children and adolescents. My dissertation examined the relationship between exposure to racism and psychophysiological outcomes, as moderated by racial identity among college age students. As a member of the child development lab, I will be part of the HBDC study working to recruit families with the goal of gaining a deeper understanding of how the brain develops when the child is exposed to psychosocially toxic environments while in utero and after birth.