School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 1-43 of 43 Results
-
Chiara Gasteiger
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
BioChiara Gasteiger, P.h.D. is a SPARQ Postdoctoral Scholar in the Mind & Body Lab, led by Associate Professor Alia Crum. Chiara's doctoral thesis explored how the transition to biosimilars can be improved, with a focus on optimising patient-practitioner communication and the involvement of companions (support people).
Chiara’s research aims to understand how the social environment influences the development of mindsets and how psycho-social forces can be harnessed to optimise people's mindsets about illness and improve health outcomes. She is also interested in understanding how changes in subjective mindsets can alter physiological mechanisms. Her other academic interests include patient-practitioner communication, patient expectations, funding and resource allocation in health and understanding how patients utilise social networks to cope with, manage and make sense of their illness.
Chiara is not currently available to supervise graduate students. Please contact the Mind & Body Lab manager, Jesse Barrera, for enquires about joining the lab. -
Zainab Hosseini
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCulturally - contextually responsive psychosocial support services for refugees
-
Ronda Lo
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI study culture and diversity, focusing on regional cultures, religion, & race.
-
Rui Pei
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
BioRui (/ˈreɪ/) received her B.Sc. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Brown University, and her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania. She is interested in understanding how adolescents and young adults make social decisions in the context of psychological and neural development. Her research focuses on social risk taking, or risk taking behaviors that bring social consequences. Some of the questions that her research tries to answer include: what motivates people to take social risks, and how does social risk taking contribute to adolescent health and well-being?
-
Kat Adams Shannon
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
BioKat studies how young children adapt their attention and learning behaviors to best match different early environments, with particular focus on understanding variability and strengths in contexts of early adversity. A key aim of her research is to create and collaborate on innovative uses of technology and statistical methods to support education and developmental science.
-
Mikaela Spruill
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
BioMikaela Spruill’s research investigates how our judgments and decisions at the individual-level sustain systemic inequities. She works to understand the cognitive processes and social contexts that help facilitate large-scale racial disparities via policy preferences and legal decision-making. She is the Criminal Justice Postdoctoral Fellow with SPARQ at Stanford where she aids in the advancement of the center’s projects on the criminal justice system, with a focus on policing and public safety. Additionally, she serves as an editorial fellow for Psychology, Public Policy & Law.
-
Tammy Tran
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
BioTammy earned her PhD at Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on examining the neural mechanisms underlying memory encoding in young adults and how these processes may change in aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Tammy’s work leverages virtual navigation to explore how memory and spatial navigation are intertwined.
As part of the Stanford Aging and Memory study, she investigates how structural changes are related to biofluid and imaging biomarkers of disease. Tammy is funded by both an NIA F32 and an Alzheimer’s Association Research Fellowship to promote Diversity. -
Chunchen Xu
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
BioI am currently a postdoc researcher at the Psychology Department at Stanford University. I study culture and the self in the context of AI-based smart technological developments. The first line of my work focuses on understanding and critiquing extant technological systems from a cultural perspective. I unpack cultural assumptions underlying conceptions of smart technology and examine technology's social and psychological impact. The second line of my work seeks to untether the self from extant mainstream meaning systems and open the space of the imaginary. I explore how historically marginalized cultural worldviews offer clues for diversifying conceptions of smart technology towards building a more equitable society and a caring ecology.
-
Rebecca Zhu
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
BioI am a postdoctoral fellow in developmental psychology at Stanford University, working with Michael C. Frank. Previously, I was a PhD candidate and postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, working with Alison Gopnik, and a lab manager at Harvard University, working with Susan Carey.
My research investigates when and how children acquire, and consequently learn from, symbolic systems such as language and pictures. In one line of research, I investigate the mechanisms underlying children’s acquisition of various kinds of non-literal language, such as metaphor and metonymy, as well as how children’s non-literal language comprehension may further guide their thinking and reasoning. In another line of research, I work with urban and rural Kenyan children to investigate the efficacy of picture-based learning materials and the validity of picture-based assessments across cultures and contexts. My work in Kenya is conducted in close collaboration with researchers and non-profit organizations in Kisumu, Mombasa, and Nairobi.
This research program is innovative and interdisciplinary: these findings not only address fundamental debates in psychology, philosophy, and linguistics (i.e., by providing empirical insight into the mechanisms underlying children’s ability to acquire and learn from symbolic systems), but also have direct implications for applied research in education, public health, and developmental economics (i.e., by improving the learning materials and assessment tools used in global early childhood development programs).