Our PhD student, Maximilian Ciesla, received the Visionary New Scientist Award from the Center for BrainHealth. This award will support his ongoing fMRI research on the neurocomputational mechanisms underlying adolescents’ self-esteem updating. Congratulations, Max!

We also bid farewell to Thomas Painter, our lab manager. We are deeply grateful to Thomas, who played an instrumental role in building and shaping our new lab over the past 1.5 years. We wish him all the very best in the next chapter of his journey!

The lab gained access to the Queensland Twin Adolescent Brain (QTAB) dataset, which will support our research on the neurobiological and environmental mechanisms underlying adolescent socioemotional and self development. We are grateful to Peiru Zhang for her hard work in making this possible and to Queensland’s research team for sharing this invaluable resource!

The lab participated in the Center for Children and Families’ annual Family Celebration, engaged kids with a fun emotion recognition quiz, and shared information about our study!

After 1.5 years of contribution, one of our inaugural members, Haley Price, left the lab for her next chapter. Thank you, Haley, for all your contributions and best wishes as you begin this exciting new journey!

Hamshitha presented her work on the effects of peer perpetration and victimization trajectories on brain development at the 2025 Social and Affective Neuroscience Society (SANS) conference in Chicago.

Hamshitha and Haley presented their research at the 2025 Undergraduate Research Scholars Award Presentations. Congratulations to both!

Thomas, Hamshitha, Haley, and Kathryn presented their posters on self-disclosure, peer victimization/perpetration, peer comparison, and social evaluation at the 2025 Dallas Aging and Cognition Conference. Max and Israel also contributed as co-authors on the posters and volunteered to help facilitate the conference. Congratulations, everyone!

Great news! Hamshitha and Haley received the ‘2025 Undergraduate Research Scholars Award.’ Stay tuned for their research presentation in April 2025!

We are thrilled to welcome two new PhD students, Israel and Max, to the lab!

We bid farewell to Siri Boinapalli, who made valuable contributions to our studies during the summer.

Great news! The IRB for our project titled “Development of Cognitive Ability, Mental Health, and Personality in Youth” has been approved!

Israel and Dr. Yoon attended the 2024 SRNDNA Computational Modeling Workshop at the University of Pennsylvania.

The lab has gained access to data from the NIMH Data Archive’s Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. Additionally, the IRB for our research on the effects of social victimization trajectories on structural brain development has been approved!

Dimple’s abstract, “Neuroanatomical Mediators of Developmental Differences in Defensive Responses Following Social Evaluative Threat,” was accepted for a poster presentation at Flux 2024 (Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Society).

Dr. Yoon presented a poster titled “Longitudinal Relations Among Depressive Symptoms and Interpersonal Problems Across Mid to Late Adolescence in Girls,” her postdoc project at UC Davis, at the Society for Adolescence. Dr. Yoon also coauthored a talk led by Dr. Alva Tang, titled “Adolescents’ Learning of Reflected Self-Views in Close Friendships and Internalizing Symptoms: A Pilot Study.”

Thomas presented the lab introduction poster following Dr. Frank Lin’s talk on “Hearing Loss & Brain Health.”

We launched the DSAN Lab with our first cohort of lab members: Thomas, Dimple, Haley, Kathryn, and Hamshitha!