Biography
I received a B.A. in Psychology and Physics with a minor in Philosophy from Cornell University in 2021. I am currently a master’s student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I work in the Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience of Psychopathology (CANOPY) Lab under the supervision of Dr. Wendy Heller.
Research Interests
- Emotions
- Emotion regulation
- Anxiety and affective disorders
- Sociocultural identities
Research Description
I am interested in the underlying mechanisms associated with emotions, emotion regulation, and internalizing psychopathology, as well as the impact of sociocultural identities such as culture and gender. One phenomenon I am curious about is stereotype threat (ST), or the psychological threat experienced when an individual feels at risk of confirming negative stereotypes about their social group. Currently, I am exploring the relationships among internalizing symptoms, executive function, and gender-related stereotype threat susceptibility (STS) using a multi-group structural equation model (SEM).
I am also interested in delineating the different dimensions of anxiety and affective disorders. The CANOPY Lab has previously identified two dimensions of anxiety, anxious apprehension and anxious arousal, that are associated with different behavioral, cognitive, and psychological characteristics. Recently, the lab has focused on anxious freezing, a separate dimension characterized by changes in body sway, heart rate, and brain activity. I am part of a team developing a paradigm to elicit anxious freezing in the fMRI environment, and I am planning to analyze multimodal data to examine its psychological correlates.