Lab Director
Yang Qu is an Associate Professor of Human Development and Social Policy in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. He received PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and completed postdoctoral training from Stanford University. Yang takes an interdisciplinary approach that combines developmental psychology, cultural psychology, and neuroscience to examine how sociocultural contexts shape adolescent development. He studies adolescents from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds using a variety of methodological approaches, including longitudinal and experimental designs along with survey, observational, and biological (e.g., neuroimaging with fMRI) assessments.
Graduate Students
Beiming Yang is a sixth-year PhD student in the Human Development and Social Policy program. He received his B.A. and M.S. degrees in Economics from the University of Illinois. His research sits at the intersection of family science, education science, and developmental neuroscience. He is interested in how family contexts (e.g., parental burnout and family conflict), cultural environments (e.g., familism values and racial discrimination), and the developing brain (e.g., neural structure and function) jointly shape adolescents’ psychological, behavioral, and academic development. Methodologically, his research combines survey with neuroimaging to examine the longitudinal changes in adolescent adjustment with a developmental lens and explore these processes at both between-person and within-person levels.
Varun Devakonda is a fifth-year PhD student in the Human Development and Social Policy program. He received his B.A. in Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his M.S. in Education from Johns Hopkins University. His research interests are centered around topics related to educational neuroscience; more specifically, exploring how neuroscience can be applied within academic contexts to improve instructional practices, school policies, and educational outcomes within underserved communities. Fun fact: I taught middle-school math for two years and was involved in a music program called Guitars Over Guns.
Di Hu is a first-year PhD student in the Human Development and Social Policy program at Northwestern University. She received a Master of Social Work degree from New York University. Di’s research examines how cultural and social factors influence adolescent development, focusing on academic motivation, emotional well-being, and the challenges adolescents face in navigating these influences. She is particularly interested in intervention strategies to promote positive developmental outcomes. Additionally, Di is exploring the potential of emerging technologies, such as large language models (LLMs), to support adolescent mental health through culturally sensitive approaches.
Lab Alumni
Tianying Cai was a postdoctoral fellow of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She is currently a postdoctoral scholar at University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She earned a PhD degree in Human Development and Family Studied and MS degree in Statistics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned a BS degree in Psychology from Fudan University. Her main research interest is to investigate sociocultural factors that influence children and adolescent’s health and psychological wellbeing using a biopsychosocial approach. The first line of her research examines the antecedents and consequences of parenting behaviors. The second line of research focuses on understanding the interplay between individual (e.g., physiological, neural, cognitive) and family factors for children’s adjustment. The third line of research aims to elucidate the social and familial processes of children’s sleep.
Zeyi Shi was a postdoctoral fellow of Human Development and Social Policy in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She is currently an Associate Professor at East China Normal University. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and also worked as an honorary postdoctoral fellow after graduation. Zeyi’s research takes a multidisciplinary approach and is motivated by three major questions: 1) What interpersonal and sociocultural factors could enhance youth’s psychological functioning? 2) What are the contributing factors to parenting and momentary parent-child interactions? 3) How could interventions and education programs promote optimal parenting and positive youth development? Recently, her research focuses on parent-child interactions around children’s learning and emotion socialization, with implications for children’s academic and socioemotional functioning.
Lamia Abbas was a Project Coordinator and Lab Manager for the Culture, Brain, and Human Development Lab from 2021-2022. She graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2019 with A B.S. in Psychobiology with a Specialization in Computing. Lamia is interested in researching how social and environmental factors can affect developmental trajectory and decision-making behavior through adolescence.
Current Research Assistants
Mandy Bu
Lily Kellams
Ziyue Meng
Haoyu (Jane) Zeng
Phoebe Lee
Kathyayini Mendu
Past Research Assistants
Anor Chen
Shiqi Xiao
Emily Kelleher
Kristen Lee
Elijah Huang
Anna Alava
Maria Herrera
Caroline Kruk
Kate Rooney
Feiyu (Sally) Wang
Jiayi (Kayla) Tan