The Child Study Center
Rutgers University
CHILD STUDY CENTER LAB MEMBERS
Vanessa LoBue, PhD
Lab Director, Professor of Psychology
Department Chair
Dr. LoBue is originally from central New Jersey. She received her BS from Carnegie Mellon University, and her MA and PhD from the University of Virginia. After a doing post-doc at New York University, she joined the Rutgers University faculty in 2011. In her research, Dr. LoBue is interested in emotional development, and the effect of emotion and experience on perception and learning. She has a blog on Psychology Today where she writes about developmental science research for parents. Download CV.
Office Phone: 973-353-3950
Email: vlobue@psychology.rutgers.edu
Office: Smith Hall, Room 342
Laura Bierstedt
Graduate Student
Laura is originally from south Texas. She earned her BA and MA in psychology from Texas A&M University Corpus Christi. Her primary research interests lie in the neurological underpinnings of shyness and the evolution of how shyness manifests across the lifespan. Specifically, she is interested in the effects of low SES and caregiver stressors on emotional development in childhood and the propensity for those with shyness to struggle with substance abuse and other psychological disorders in adolescence and adulthood.
Office Phone: 973-353-5148
Email: lbierstedt@gmail.com
Office: Smith Hall, Room B21
Jessica Burris, PhD
Visiting Research Scholar
Jessica received her BS and her PhD from the University of California, Davis. She is interested in cognitive and neural development in both typically and atypically developing populations. Her work has focused on identifying attentional patterns towards affect in very young children, with specific interest on those children who show a persistent attentional bias towards threatening information in the environment. She is interested in further investigating the impact that these attentional patterns have on other areas of cognitive development and in exploring the neural underpinnings of these patters. Download CV.
Email: jessicaburris129@gmail.com
Cassandra Bell
Graduate Student
Cassie is from Margate, Florida. She received her B.S. in Psychology- Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience and B.A. in Women's Studies from the University of Florida in 2018. Post-graduation, Cassie worked with Dr. Gizelle Anzures as a Lab Manager for the Human Development Lab at Florida Atlantic University. She then worked as a Research Fellow with Dr. BJ Casey on the ABCD Study at Yale University. Cassie is interested in the effects of proximity to and perception of violence, trauma, and the environment on the developing mind and brain.
Office Phone: 973-353-5148
Email: cassieannbell@gmail.com
Office: Smith Hall, Room B21
Rosalina Cerda-Lopez, BSW
Community Liaison
Rosalina is from East Orange, New Jersey. She graduated with an undergraduate degree in Social Work with a minor in Psychology from Rutgers University in 2021. In the upcoming years she hopes to attend a graduate program. She is interested in pursuing a career as a Public Health Social Worker.
Email: Rc958@psychology.rutgers.edu
Office: Smith Hall, Room B21
Amber Hu
Graduate Student
Amber is originally from Zhejiang, China. She received her B.A. in cognitive science and psychology from Johns Hopkins University in 2020. She is primarily interested in how children learn to utilize the various affective cues in their environment to make inferences about other people's internal emotional states as well as the external contexts they are in. Specifically, she is interested in exploring children's interpretation of conflicting affective cues, how this may change during the course of development, and how it might be impacted by the kinds of environmental inputs children receive.
Email: th686@scarletmail.rutgers.edu
Office: Smith Hall, Room B21
Lauren Leotti, PhD
Post-doctoral Fellow
Lauren began her psychology research career in a developmental cognitive neuroscience lab at Georgetown University, working with Chandan Vaidya. In 2009, under the mentorship of Tor Wager, Lauren received her Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University, and then completed a post-doc with Mauricio Delgado at Rutgers University. After having two children of her own, she has renewed personal interest in developmental psychology. Her research interests relate broadly to understanding learning, self regulation, and decision making, using behaviorial, psychophysiological and neuroimaging tools.
Marissa Ogren, PhD
Post-doctoral Fellow
Marissa became interested in developmental psychology research as an undergraduate at the University of Washington. After receiving her BS in psychology, she worked as a clinical research assistant at Seattle Children's Research Institute before receiving her MA and PhD from UCLA. Marissa is interested in how infants and young children learn about emotions, and what factors may account for individual differences in children's interpretations of emotional information.
Office Phone: 973-353-3938
Email: marissa.ogren@rutgers.edu
Office: Smith Hall, Room B21
Nicole Oppenheimer
Lab Manager
Nicole is originally from North Jersey. She earned her BS in Psychology and MS in Experimental Psychology with a concentration in Cognitive Neuroscience from Seton Hall University. She spent 2 years as a lab manager for Dr. Alex White at Barnard College investigating human visual perception. Currently, Nicole is interested in how factors such as language and family influence cognitive development and the consequences this may have for future learning. In the following years, she hopes to pursue a career in developmental research and continue to explore how our cognitive development as children impacts our lives as adults.
Email: nlo28@psychology.rutgers.edu
Office: Smith Hall, Room B21
CHILD STUDY CENTER ALUMNI
Lewis Baker, PhD
Former Post-doctoral Fellow
Lewis received his BS from Loyola University New Orleans and his PhD from Vanderbilt University. His post-doc with the CSC focused on the development of the Mobile Maker Center, a portable lab outfitted with cameras and algorithms that measure children’s emotional state during play. He went on to work as a data scientist at Pymetrics.
Email: lewisjbaker@gmail.com
Katy-Ann Blacker, PhD
Former Graduate Student
Katy-Ann received her B.A. in Psychology in 2011 and her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the Child Study Center in Rutgers Newark in 2016. She is interested in how children and adults learn, represent, and reason about causal relationships and how those representations influence risk evaluation and decision-making. In graduate school, she investigated whether and how children's and adults' knowledge of illness transmission and pathogens influenced engagement in preventative behaviors such as hand-washing and avoidance. In a separate line of work, she explored the kinds of information about health that people find most appealing and persuasive
when making health-related decisions.
Email: blacker.katyann@gmail.com
Megan Conrad (formerly Geerdts), PhD
Former Graduate Student
Dr. Megan Geerdts completed her B.A. with honors at The College of New Jersey in 2009, and her PhD in developmental Psychology at the Child Study Center in Rutgers Newark in 2014. She then went on to do a post-doc with Dr. Stuart Marcovitch at UNC, Greensboro.
Email: megangeerdts@gmail.com
Jennifer Irving
Former Lab Manager
Jennifer graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from Rutgers University in 2013. Her research interests include approach and avoidance behaviors of young children during food selection. She went on to work as the Program Assistant for the Center on Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice at Rutgers Newark.
Email: ja_irving@yahoo.com
Teresa Harvey
Former Lab Manager
Teresa graduated with an undergraduate degree in Psychology and Cognitive Science with a minor in Philosophy from Rutgers University in 2011. She was the lab manager at the Child Study Center from 2012-2014. She went on to earn her PhD at Boston University with Dr. Peter Blake.
Email: teresaeharvey@gmail.com
Lab Website: http://www.bu.edu/cdl/sdll/
Christina Joseph, PhD
Former Post-doctoral Fellow
Christina received her BA, MA, and PhD from Rutgers University-Newark. She is interested in the relationship between body dissatisfaction and visual attentional biases and pinpointing the stages in development when these two processes appear and shift. She went on to work as the Chapter Support Manager at the National Society of Leadership and success.
Email: christij@psychology.rutgers.edu
Website: https://www.nsls.org/
Emily Kim, PhD
Former Graduate Student
Emily graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2016 with a BS in Psychology. Emily is interested in emotional and moral development, particularly how emotion understanding drives prosocial behaviors. In her current work, she is examining how emotional and social contextual cues affect sharing behavior. She went on to do a post-doc at the University of Toronto with Dr. Jessica Sommerville, and then accepted a position as Program Manager in Life Sciences at the New York Academy of Sciences
Email: emilyyrkim@gmail.com
Elise Mahaffey
Former Lab Manager
Elise is originally from Napa, California. She received her B.S. in Child Development with a minor in Psychology from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in 2019. At Cal Poly, she worked in a lab investigating parent-child joint engagement in science activities as well as children’s capacity to learn and enjoy astronomy topics in museum settings. She has spent many years working with children in both formal and informal contexts, most recently as a preschool teacher at the Cal Poly Preschool Learning Lab. Elise went on to attend graduate school to earn a PhD in Developmental Psychology at the University of Arizona.
Email: em952@psychology.rutgers.edu
Kaleigh Matthews, PhD
Former Graduate Student
Kaleigh is from Albany, NY. She received her BS from Marist College in 2010, and her PhD in developmental Psychology at the Child Study Center in Rutgers Newark in 2016. Her dissertation was on the cognitive factors that guide aggressive behavior in preschool children. She went on to work as the graduate program coordinator in the Department of Earth and Environmental Services at Columbia University.
Email: kaleighbmatthews@gmail.com
Denise Oleas
Former Project Manager
Denise graduated from Northwestern University in 2017 with a B.A. in Cognitive Sciences and Psychology. She is currently managing our longitudinal investigation of the developmental relationship between perceptual biases for threat and negative affect. She is interested in working with the patient population in a clinical setting. Denise went on to pursue a doctoral degree in clinical neuropsychology at Fordham University in New York.
Email: oleasdenise@gmail.com
Claudia Pinzon
Former Project Manager
Claudia is originally from Colombia and moved to the US when she was 13 years old. She received her BA in Psychology from Rutgers University-Newark and has been involved in research in social psychology since 2016. She joined the Child Study Center as she finishes her MA in Psychology. In her research, she is interested in prejudice and attitudes towards immigrants. She is excited to work in a lab that studies children from various backgrounds and hopes to continue her research career investigating the formation of attitudes towards outgroups. Claudia is currently a Quality Assurance Specialist at the Partnership for Children of Essex.
Email: cpinzon@psychology.rutgers.edu
Nicole Pochinki
Former Project Manager
Nicole is originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina and joined the Child Study Center after receiving her BS in Behavioral Neuroscience with a minor in Physics from Northeastern University. She has conducted studies in developmental psychology as well as in education policy. Her main interests lie in the translation of cognitive psychology research to science education.
Office Phone: 973-353-3938
Email: pochinki.n@husky.neu.edu
Office: Smith Hall, Room B21
Kali Revilla
Former Lab Manager
Kali is originally from Mexico City and resides in Leonia, NJ. She joined the Child Study center after receiving a B.A. in Psychology from Montclair State University. She has a passion for understanding the development of children, and has previously conducted research on the development of spatial language. In the following years she hopes to attend a graduate program and pursue a career in Pediatric Occupational Therapy.
Email: kalirevilla@gmail.com
Lori Reider, PhD
Former Graduate Student
Lori is from Ellenville, N.Y. She earned her BA in psychology and criminology from Hofstra University in 2016. She then completed a post Baccalaureate position with Dr. Nathan Fox investigating relations between early temperament and social anxiety outcomes over time. Lori is interested in emotional development in the first years of life, and is particularly interested in understanding how cognition and emotion interact in young children and lead to the development of avoidant behaviors. In her work, she studies the effects of verbal information on the development and maintenance of fears in early childhood. After graduating, Lori went on to work as a Research Scientist with the Bureau of Research, Evaluation and Performance Analytics at the New York State Office of Children and Family Services.
Office Phone: 973-353-5148
Email: lorireider95@gmail.com
Office: Smith Hall, Room B21
Michell Sarquez
Former Project Manager
Michell is from Belleville, NJ. She graduated with an undergraduate degree in Psychology with a minor in Biology from Rutgers University in 2018. She is interested in pursing a career as a Doctor of Physical Therapy in the future.
Email: sarquezmichell@gmail.com
Zachary Walden
Former Lab Manager
Zach Walden graduated from Franklin & Marshall College in 2016 with a B.A. in Psychology. His interests lie in children’s emotion regulation abilities, reactions to emotionally valenced stimuli, and how early life experiences may precipitate and predict later behavior. He was the lab manager at the Child Study Center for three years and went on to pursue a graduate degree at LaSalle.
Email: zachary.walden1@gmail.com
Yang Yang, PhD
Former Post-doctoral Fellow
Yang is originally from Beijing, China. She received her Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Science in psychology from Peking University in China, her Master of Education from Harvard University, and her PhD from Cornell University. She is interested in children’s cognitive and emotional development in different cultural contexts. Her research has focused on the developmental patterns (developmental trajectories and age differences), the antecedents (cultural contexts and parent-child interaction), and the consequences (emotion regulation, psychological adjustment, and learning) of children’s emotional development. She is currently a Research Scientist at the National Institute of Education in Singapore.
Email: yang.yang@nie.edu.sg