Human Development Graduate Students

Maame Adomako is PhD student in the Human Development area. She received a B.A. from Central Michigan University, where she double majored in Psychology and Sociology with a Youth Studies Concentration. Her professional and research experiences are aimed toward enhancing leadership and diversity among adolescents in education. Her skills include multicultural programming, tutoring and mentoring high and middle school students.

John Binzak is an educational game designer and researcher completing his PhD in the Human Development area.  His work explores questions at the intersection of neuroscience, cognitive development, and education. From brains to games, John applies his interdisciplinary approach to study how students learn mathematical concepts, and the impact of educational multimedia, such as video games, in this learning.

Catherine Bredemann is a sixth-year graduate student in the Educational Psychology graduate studies program. Catherine earned her B.S. in Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014. Upon finishing the prerequisites for her psychology degree, she enrolled in courses geared toward teacher training, including courses on educational psychology, policy, and practice.

Angie Calvin is a doctoral student in the Human Development area of the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her primary research interests focus on the risks and opportunities of social media use on the psychosocial development of adolescents. Particularly, she is interested in the implications of social media on relationships with parents and peers.

Leandro Chernicoff is a graduate student in the Human Development area. He is interested in the development of cognitive, affective and behavioral skills to foster well-being and alleviate suffering. This started as a personal quest, and for the last six years he has collaborated as Academic Director of AtentaMente, a Mexican nonprofit focused on teaching these very skills to adults, children, and teens. He is also a physicist and a full-time professor at UACM, one of three public universities in Mexico City, teaching college level math and physics for the last 14 years.

I am a member of the Enright Forgiveness lab. In the past, I have taught development courses (e.g., children) as an instructor/adjunct. Hiking, food, and good fellowship are a central part of my identity.

I am interested in understanding how social media use may impact adolescents and young adults' well-being. Currently, I am working on projects investigating how college students' social media use to impact their mental health and social relationships during COVID-19 self-isolation.

Hui-Ru is passionate about doing research in the field of multi-sensory integration. She is particularly interested in studying the relationship of multi-sensory integration and cognition. Moreover, she is looking forward to applying what she has learned in multi-sensory integration to education and improving user experience of technology in the future.

My research program broadly focuses on identity development in adolescence and emerging adulthood. In particular, I am interested in 3 key facets (timing, content, and process) of identity development and its impact on adolescent health and well-being.

Ron is interested in mathematical cognition, particularly how students come to associate meaning to the symbols and rules of symbol manipulation necessary for mathematics. He is especially interested in how these associations influence reasoning and how these associations change over time. This involves trying to understand the nature of processes underlying symbolic meaning and mathematical knowledge in the hopes of developing methods for identifying problems and designing effective interventions.

Based on work experience and his passion for youth offenders, Wongeun hopes to make a contribution to the healthy development of youth offenders who were victimized in the past. His interests center on the role of morality as a protective factor for delinquency prevention, and the improvement of correctional treatment by applying forgiveness education to detained youth.

Julie Johnson is a doctoral student in the Human Development area of the Educational Psychology program of UW-Madison. During her Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis Master’s program at Ohio State University,  she examined service-learning as a catalyst for college student moral & cognitive development. She presented at the NASPA region IV-E conference in 2009 where she integrated service-learning research with development theory to examine and critique undergraduate service-learning courses and proposed better theory-to-practice programming.

Melina Knabe is a Ph.D. student in the Learning, Cognition, and Development Lab with Dr. Haley Vlach. Her research interests lie in language and memory development of mono- and multilingual children.

Mary Cate’s interests focus on the relationship between early-life trauma and later juvenile criminal behavior, specifically focusing on family conflict and trauma. Her interests also extend into trauma-informed systems and what role they should play in juvenile delinquency.

Emma Lazaroff is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Human Development program in the Department of Educational Psychology. Emma received her B.A. in Psychology from Quinnipiac University and was a lab manager at Boston College prior to pursuing her Ph.D. Her research interests lie in how children use cognitive supports such as analogy and language to learn about science and mathematics, as well as how they generalize this knowledge to increasingly complex concepts.

Pema is currently contributing to a large scale research project in Mexico that aims to foster the well-being of children and adults in the school environment by introducing social and emotional learning(SEL) curricula. She is also interested in understanding how practices that foster compassion can influence well-being and how such practices may strengthen relationships between individuals and larger communities.

I am interested in understanding how to engage educational and cultural forces to promote virtue development, like the development of forgiveness.

Nahlah Mandurah is a doctoral student in the Human Development area of the Educational Psychology program under the supervision of Dr. Robert Enright. Nahlah received her bachelor degree in Kindergarten from Umm Al.Qura University in Saudi Arabia. In addition to the human development courses, she also did a field training teaching in school for a period of time. Throughout her bachelor program and field training, Nahlah has become interested in human development and how curriculum can promote the students’ psychological well-being.

Janet is a member of the Enright Forgiveness Lab. She is interested in forgiveness and emotional well-being among victims of Narcissistic Abuse.

Amy is a member of the Peer Relations Study Group with Dr. B.Bradford.Brown. Her research focuses on understanding late adolescents and young adults' use of new technology and social media and its influence on their socioemotional development.

Katherine is a graduate student in the Human Development stream of the Educational Psychology department. Her research is focused on the cognitive impact of pretend play and drama practices at different stages of development.

My research interests include adolescent peer relationships, online aggression, social media, and mental health outcomes.

Yunji is a Ph.D. candidate in the Human Development area studying educational neuroscience. She is investigating the development of ratio representations and following structural and fuctional brain changes. To find out more, visit yunji-park.com!

Robby Quintana is a Phd student working in the Mathematics Education and Learning Lab with Percival Matthews. He is interested in the relationship between spatial ability and mathematics.

Hannah Rapp is a Ph.D. candidate in the Human Development Area of Educational Psychology. She is a member of the Enright Forgiveness Lab.  Hannah earned a B.A. in Psychology at Wheaton College, IL, as well as minors in English and Biblical Archaeology. After college, Hannah did behavioral counseling in a residential facility for children with OCD and worked in a lab, at the same facility, researching adult OCD.

Isabella Starling Alves is a graduate student in Human Development area in the Department of Educational Psychology. She is interested in the integration between neurosciences and education, and has experience working on developmental disorders, with focus on developmental dyscalculia.

I am interested in parent-child and romantic partner technoference, and the buffering role of forgiveness play.

Yi Tong is a Ph.D. student in the Human Development area in Educational Psychology Department. She is a member of the Learning, Cognition, and Development lab with Dr. Haley Vlach.

Priscilla Tovar-Perez is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Educational Psychology Department, Human Development area. Priscilla is part of Dr. Amy Bellmore’s research team, which focuses on school-based peer relationships during adolescence. Growing up in San Antonio, Texas, she has become highly interested on the impact of environmental factors on educational outcomes.

I am interested in how visual representations can support children's fraction learning and mathematical development.

Jiahe Wang Xu is a Ph.D. student in the Human Development area in Educational Psychology Department. She is a member of the Enright Forgiveness Lab, and participates in the Prevention, Intervention, and Enhancement Scholar Graduate Training Program. She received her B.A. in Applied Biology in City University of Hong Kong and master’s degree in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at UW-Madison.

Brooke Wollner is a graduate student in the Human Development area of the Educational Psychology program under the supervision of Dr. Robert Enright. Her research interests include historical trauma and human development in relation to crime.

Her research aims to turn theories and philosophy into practices for the well-being of human development.  Her current research interests include moral agency development as a means for citizenship development and prevention for gang involvement, the development of a just and merciful community for school safety, as well as forgiveness education.

Lifan Yu is a Ph.D. candidate from the Department of Educational Psychology, Human Development area. She graduated from the Psychology Department at Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) with her B.S. degree. Her research interests mainly focus on how past injustices influence individuals’ social-emotional attitudes, moral-behavioral changes, and psychological well-being, as well as proposing forgiveness therapy in prison context. She also has experience in teaching Statistics and Psychological Developmental courses.

I am interested in the effect of forgiveness on mental health, and especially the role of forgiveness in family context