I’m a software developer on the Lookit team who specializes in creating the software and systems used to run behavioral experiments online. Lookit is a website run by the ECCL that allows families to participate in cognitive developmental experiments from home. My work on the team involves adding new features, testing, debugging, improving documentation, and offering technical support.

Mark is an Associate Professor of Social Sciences at Minerva University, and a research affiliate of Keck Graduate Institute, Yale University, and MIT. His research in developmental psychology has focused on the development of moral behavior, as well as how children learn from explanations. His current focus is on developing infrastructure for online developmental research, including as part of TheChildLab.com at Yale, Lookit.mit.edu at MIT, and a multi-university collaboration ChildrenHelpingScience.com.

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Junyi Chu is a postdoc at the Harvard Computation, Cognition, and Development Labs with Tomer Ullman and Elizabeth Bonawitz. She completed her PhD in the ECCL, advised by Laura Schulz.

Junyi’s research explores the nature and developmental origins of creative thought, with recent work focusing on play. She designs behavioral experiments to study how people explore and reason in novel situations, and integrates psychological and computational theories to understand when and why thinking is fun.

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Nicole Coates received her BA in Cognitive Neuroscience from UC Davis and her MS in Psychology and Philosophy from San Jose State University. She is broadly interested in how children learn. More specifically, she is interested in how children come to learn abstract structure(s), why some structures are easier to learn than others, and our ability to spontaneously create structure in the world.

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Shengyi Wu is a PhD student in the Early Childhood Cognition Lab at MIT. She graduated from University of California, Berkeley in May 2020, where she studied Psychology and Data Science. Prior to joining MIT, Shengyi worked as a project manager in the Computation and Language lab and the Kidd lab at UC Berkeley. Shengyi is broadly interested in using behavioral and computational approaches to study children’s social learning and attention.

Izabelė Jonušaitė is a PhD student at the Early Childhood Cognition Lab (PI: Laura Schulz) and the Computation Cognitive Science group (PI: Josh Tenenbaum). She is interested in combining computational and experimental approaches to study causal reasoning in naturalistic settings and how this capacity develops in children.

Prior to MIT, Izabelė was a Postgraduate Research Fellow at the Computation, Cognition and Development Lab at Harvard University (PI: Tomer Ullman) where she investigated people’s intuitive explanations in the domain of intuitive sociology. She received an MSc in Cognitive Science from the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), and a BA in Philosophy from the University of York (United Kingdom).

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Jessica Chomik graduated from the Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University with a Bachelors in Biological and Physical Sciences and a concentration in Cognitive Neuroscience. From 2018 until 2020, Jessica worked in Alex Keene’s Drosophila lab where she examined the effects of toxic beta-amyloid expression on fly sleep. During her time there, she hosted and co-produced a science podcast, “The Research Diaries,” about her undergraduate research experience. Jessica has also worked in a clinical setting at a neuropsychological testing center where she administered cognitive assessments to at-risk patients in the geriatric population to screen for Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia. Today, Jessica is analyzing causal behavior using fMRI in a joint-lab project under Dr. Laura Schulz and Dr. Nancy Kanwisher as a post-bacc researcher.

Lia Washington is a post-baccalaureate research scholar. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from New York University with minors in Computer Science and Korean language. At New York University she was a research assistant in another experimental developmental lab. Her primary interests lie in multilingualism and language acquisition, specifically, how learned languages and learning languages can affect how individuals understand and navigate the world.

Karla Perez is a post-baccalaureate research scholar. She earned her B.A. in Philosophy and Data Science from Lake Forest College, IL. At Lake Forest, she worked in an experimental philosophy lab on causal reasoning. Currently, her research interests are broad; she is interested in causal reasoning, how people acquire concepts and (use them to) form ideas, and developing cognitive models. At the intersection of philosophy and science, she is interested in the community and puzzle-building/solving aspect of science (à la Khun) and how cognitive scientists develop theories and characterize their findings.

Kiera Parece is a graduate student in the ECCL at MIT. She was previously a post-baccalaureate Research Assistant working concurrently in the ECCL and the Computational Cognitive Development Lab at Harvard with Dr. Tomer Ullman. Kiera graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in Psychology and Political Science. Prior to joining the ECCL, Kiera worked as a lab manager at Swarthmore College and as a preschool teacher and museum educator. Kiera is broadly interested in children’s social cognition and the role social influences play in children’s learning.

Sienna Radifera is working at ECCL MIT as a Lab Manager since summer of 2022. As of Fall 2024, she is pursuing a Master’s in Computer Science with a focus in Data Science through Johns Hopkins University. She previously received her BA in Psychology from Boston University. There, she grew an interest for computer science and statistics. She is passionate about psychology related research, data science, and growing her programming skills.

Asmita Mittal is an undergraduate student at Cornell University and has been working with the ECCL since high school. She is pursuing a BS in Human Development on a pre-medical track, alongside a Biomedical Engineering minor. Asmita is passionate about research regarding children’s play, persistence, and decision making. She is increasingly fascinated by the origins of children’s early understanding of the world and believes that curiosity should be infinite. As Asmita continues down this exciting path, she is eager to not only learn, but also uncover new aspects of human cognition along the way.