People

 

Lab Director

Maria Gendron, PhD

Contact: maria.gendron@yale.edu

Dr. Gendron is the Director of the ASCL and an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University. Dr. Gendron received her B.A and PhD from Boston College in 2006 and 2013, and worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Northeastern University before becoming to Yale. Dr. Gendron’s research agenda focuses on the dynamic influences of social, affective and cultural processes on emotional experience, emotion perception and their downstream consequences for the mind, behavior, and relationships. She adopts a multidisciplinary approach that integrates core concepts and methods from cultural, cognitive, developmental psychology, cultural anthropology, and neuroscience.  She hails from Rhode Island, the littlest state with the biggest heart. Check CV here.

 

Postdoctoral Researchers

Val Wongsomboon (she/her/hers)

Val Wongsomboon is a Susan Nolen-Hoeksema Postdoctoral Associate at Yale Psychology Department. She got her Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Florida. She adopts an interdisciplinary, multi-method approaches to understand the multifaceted influences on health and well-being across different levels (individual, interpersonal, societal). Her research focuses on sexual health and well-being, health disparities, and close relationships among historically marginalized and stigmatized populations as well as those underrepresented in sex and relationship research, such as LGBTQ+ and single (unpartnered) individuals. Currently, she is interested in the intersection of singlehood and LGBTQ+ marginalization and its consequences on well-being. You can learn more about her work at valwongsomboon.weebly.com.
 

Graduate Students

Srishti Goel (she/her/hers)

Srishti is a fifth-year graduate student interested in developing a comprehensive understanding of how people infer other’s emotions in everyday lives. She uses computational and behavioral methods to explore how individuals utilize cues in emotion inferences and how knowledge and complexity of situation perception relate to this skill. She holds an MA in psychology from University of Chicago, where she worked closely with Dr. Daniel Casasanto, exploring how bodily relativity influences our experience and perception of emotional valence. After graduation, she worked on numerous projects at the intersection of emotions and neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill under the supervision of Dr. Sheridan and Dr. Kristen Lindquist. In her free time, Srishti loves to travel, read books, spend time with family and friends, and play various sports occasionally. You can contact her at srishti.goel@yale.edu
 
 

Zhimeng Li (she/her/hers)

Zhimeng is a third-year graduate student in the Social Psychology area at Yale. She obtained a BA with double majors in Psychology and Comparative Literature from Cornell University. Before joining ASCL, she worked at the Affect & Cognition Lab with Dr. Adam Anderson on projects exploring the neurological underpinning of affective and cognitive judgment of affect valence. Zhimeng is interested in how people make inferences about the emotional and mental state of themselves and others, and how factors such as language and culture may impact these processes. Outside of the lab, she’s an avid reader, an amateur writer, and a constantly-in-starter-mode language learner. You can contact her at zhimeng.li@yale.edu
 
 
 

Eva Liu (she/her/hers)

Eva (Yuchen) Liu is a third-year graduate student in the Social Psychology area. She was born in New York, and grew up in Qingdao, China (where Tsingtao beer originated!). She graduated with a double major in Business Psychology and Cognitive Science (specialization in language and culture) from the University of California, San Diego. Her research interest lies at the intersection of culture and emotion, where she hopes to use a multi-disciplinary approach to understand the various ways in which people, across and within cultures, experience and perceive emotions. She is also interested in understanding the underlying factors, mechanisms, and downstream consequences of emotion acculturation. During her spare time, you will usually find her at the gym, trying diverse cuisines, or create novel and healthy dishes at her kitchen. You can contact her at eva.liu@yale.edu
 

Noah Reed (he/him/his)

Noah is a second-year graduate student in the Social Psychology area at Yale and co-advised by Maria Gendron and Margaret Clark. He is originally from Houston, Texas and obtained a Bachelor’s in Psychology and a minor in Spanish from Texas A&M University. Here, he worked as a lab manager for The Emotion Science Lab, where he investigated the functions of emotions (anger and boredom) with Dr. Heather Lench. Noah is interested in the different strategies we utilize to achieve belonging in close relationships, social energy expenditure, and interpersonal emotion regulation. During his spare time, Noah enjoys exercising at the gym, playing sports, and spending time with family and friends. You can contact him at noah.reed@yale.edu and visit his website at noah-reed.com.
 

Muji Chughtai (he/him/his)

Muji is a first-year graduate student in the Social Psychology area, where he is co-advised by Dr. Margaret Clark and Dr. Maria Gendron. Muji grew up near Cincinnati, Ohio, and he completed his undergraduate training at The Ohio State University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a bachelor’s degree in statistics. Prior to joining Yale, Muji worked with Dr. Russ Fazio in Ohio State’s Attitudes and Social Cognition Lab to examine the roles of rejection sensitivity and valence weighting biases on emotion perception. Currently, Muji is interested in incongruent emotion experience and emotion expression, and he is specifically interested in the relationship contexts where these incongruences occur, the motivations for individuals to create these incongruences, and attitudes towards individuals who are known to have this incongruence. Additionally, Muji is interested in exploring the similarities and differences between attitudes and emotions, such as the link between emotion expression and attitude-based behavior and the link between persuasion and emotion regulation. In his spare time, Muji likes to play video games and sports with his friends. You can contact him at muji.chughtai@yale.edu
 

Lab Coordinator

Yamini Pant (she/her/hers)

Yamini holds a BA in psychology with a minor in cognitive science from the University of Connecticut. Prior to joining the lab, she worked with Dr. Carolyn Greene at UConn Health to examine emotion regulation in trauma-affected parents and their children, and studied dyadic worry in emerging adults with Dr. Kimberli Treadwell at UConn. For her honors thesis, she studied the bidirectional relationship between self-compassion, anxiety, and mood in daily life in the Child & Adolescent Anxiety lab. Yamini is interested in how culture and language impacts emotion construction. In her free time, you can find her making art (drawing, painting, textile arts, or trying out a new medium), listening to music, and spending time with friends. You can contact her at yamini.pant@yale.edu
 

Undergraduate Students

Shen-Vey Lai
Ruhi Khan
Marie Bong
Grace Boyer
Phaedra Letrou
Stephanie Cao
Annette Forchoh
Anika Mohapatra
Arden Yum
Thomas Chung
Irene Colombo
Yichi Liu
Kaile (Kyle) Sheng
Yizhou Lu
Brenda Sales Leal
Mariah Najera
Sarah Michel
Andy Huang
Beichen Zhang
May Lee

Lab Alums

Postdoctoral Researchers

Ka I Ip, PhD (Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota)

Kathy Trang, PhD (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Harvard School of Public Health)

Research Assistants

Hanxiao Liu (Former lab coordinator and RA, now in graduate school at NYU)

Undergraduate Thesis Students

Dana Branstetter (Thesis student, Class of 2022)

Leila Jackson (Thesis student, Class of 2022)

Amy Zhang (Thesis student, Class of 2021)

Jenni Dueñas (Thesis student, Class of 2021)

Calvin Solomon (Thesis student, Class of 2022)

Justin Lobe (Thesis student, Class of 2020)

Lotta Keller (Thesis student, Class of 2020)

Jazzy Fisher (Thesis student, Class of 2020)

Davi Silva (Thesis student, Class of 2020)

Aditi Kodipady (Thesis student, Class of 2020)

Ale Estrada (Thesis student, Class of 2019)

Alex Wang (Thesis student, Class of 2019)

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Eric Kim

Yabi Defegu

Ciara Ostrander

Sammy Grob

Joceyln Zhou 

Visiting Scholars

Shao Ming Lee (Yale-NUS College, Singapore)

Liu Di (Beijing Normal University)

Kavie Yu (Carleton College)

April Azusada (Columbia University)

Walt Li (Carleton College)

Alessandra Yu (PhD Student at Mt. Sinai)

Yi Lu (Peking University)

Nicholas Peter (Gonzaga University)

Courtney Franco (UMass at Dartmouth)

Maggie Chen (York House School in Vancouver, Canada)

Sylvia Lam (University of Hong Kong)

Joy Wang (High school intern)

Ryan Xie (class of 2024 at Yale)

Desman Wilson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Jac Guerra (Brandeis University)