People

Stephanie M. Carlson is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, the #1-ranked department for developmental psychology (U.S. News & World Report). She received a BA (summa cum laude) with Honors in Psychology from Bucknell University (1991) and a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oregon (1997). After a McDonnell-Pew postdoctoral fellowship in developmental cognitive neuroscience, Dr. Carlson became an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington (1998-2007). She has been at the University of Minnesota since 2007, and was promoted to the rank of Professor in 2013.

Dr. Carlson is an internationally recognized leader in the study of executive function (brain basis of self-control). She has developed innovative ways of measuring executive function in very young children and made discoveries about the role of executive function in other important aspects of human development (decision-making, perspective-taking, and creativity). Dr. Carlson’s current research focuses on the developmental antecedents of executive function skills in toddlers, relations between executive function and academic achievement, and ways to help promote executive function through caregiving practices and preschool curricula. Her work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Institute of Education Sciences, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, John Templeton Foundation, and the Character Lab. She also has conducted cross-cultural research in North and South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, and has been a Guest Professor of Southwest Normal University in Chongqing (2006-2009) and Zhejiang Normal University in Hangzhou, China (2013-2016).

Dr. Carlson is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. She has served on several editorial boards, as Vice President of the Jean Piaget Society, and as a member of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group (University of Chicago) and the Frontiers of Innovation Pre-K Standards and Assessments Working Group (Harvard Center on the Developing Child and the National Governors’ Association). She has been an advisor to Transforming Education, the Minnesota Children’s Museum, and Sesame Workshop, and currently advises Playworks Minnesota, Understood.org, Noggin, and Bright Horizons Family Solutions. She has been nominated as a “Favorite Professor” by undergraduates and is frequently invited to speak at national and international meetings.

Dr. Carlson’s complete list of citations can be found here.

Philip David Zelazo (Honors BA, McGill ’88; PhD (with distinction), Yale ’93) is currently the Nancy M. and John E. Lindahl Professor at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, and the Co-Director of the Sino-Canadian Centre for Research in Child Development, at Southwest University, China. From 1992-2007, he taught at the University of Toronto, where he held the Canada Research Chair in Developmental Neuroscience.

Professor Zelazo’s research on the development and neural bases of executive function (the control of thought, action, and emotion) has been honored by numerous awards, including a Boyd McCandless Young Scientist Award from the American Psychological Association (APA), and a Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 Award. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society (APS), and the Mind and Life Institute, President of the Jean Piaget Society, a member of the Advisory Board of the Baumann Institute, and he is a member of several editorial boards (e.g., Child Development; Emotion, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience; Development and Psychopathology; Monographs of the SRCD, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience). He is also the co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness (Zelazo, Moscovitch, & Thompson, 2007), and the editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Developmental Psychology.

Tae Won Park is a Research Professional supporting Dr. Carlson in the NIH-subawarded study titled “Home-based Parent-Child Intervention to Enhance Executive Function.” His research interests include exploring the associations between preschool teachers’ autonomous support, early intervention in self-regulation skills, and children’s executive function skills. Tae Won received his B.A. in Psychology from Stony Brook University in 2022 and earned his M.Ed. in Early Care and Education from the University of Minnesota in May 2024.

Destany graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay with a B.S. in Psychology and Human Development. Her research interests include developmental neuroscience, executive function, and mindfulness.

Colin graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. in Psychology and History. He is interested in examining executive function, developmental neuroscience, and their effects on mental health.

Seokyung holds a B.A. in Psychology from Grinnell College (2021) and an M.A. from the Institute of Child Development (2023). She is interested in studying children’s and adolescents’ decision-making strategies during task persistence, with a particular focus on their exploration and exploitation approaches. Her research also examines how self-regulation skills and temperamental characteristics relate to individual differences in persistence decision-making. Seokyung’s long-term research aim is to help children make more effective and personally fulfilling decisions.

Isabelle received her B.A. in psychology from Stanford University in 2019. Her research interests include theory of mind and stimming (repetitive behaviors) as nonverbal communication in the autistic community. Being Autistic herself, Isabelle recognized the lack of autistic representation in autism research. She hopes to help change this through her recently-launched participatory research project, RADAR. Isabelle is also a 2022-2023 MN LEND Fellow.

Jinyi holds a B.A. in Psychology from Emory University and an M.A. from the Institute of Child Development. Her research focuses on children’s future thinking abilities and developing strategies that support their future-oriented decision-making. Outside of her work, she enjoys outdoor hiking and experimenting with new recipes in her kitchen.

Timothy Martin holds a M.A. in Clinical Psychology from University of Hawai‘i at Manoa (2019) and M.T.S. in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School (2016). His research interests include developmental cognitive neuroscience and executive function. He is especially interested in educational practices and clinical interventions, such as self-reflection and mindfulness, which promote children’s cognitive functioning.

Ayann Abdulahi

Leena Aqel

Brooke Bjerke

Talia Bodi

Elliot Breazile

Ariel Byrd

Hongquan Chen

Alharith Dameh

Elizabeth Felix

Connor Filippi

Isabelle Greenberg

Charita Gujju

Emily Jans

Sofia Jerney

Cali Keller

Zainah Khursheed

Namjoo Kim

Anna Klatt

Heba Lawabni

Jiaxin Liu

Quynh Anh Luong

Ella Machart

Kaylee Metz

Ayyub Mohamed

Adella Mulawarman

Ogenetejiri Ogbemudje

Molly Olson

Samantha Perez

Avery Peterson

Teagan Pirozzoli

Shraddha Potti

Kellen Reedy

Emma Rieger

Alex Risdall

Madeline Robinson

Noelle Shatzer

Jacob Shenouda

Shivani Shrestha

Lauren Snapp

Hans Stromberg

Paige Stueve

Neya Venugopal

Henry Wilcox

Cosmu Yu

Mark Yuan

Yunhao Zhang

Christina Zheng

Aleksandr Onchanu Graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in Developmental Psychology and Neuroscience. His research interests include how early childhood experiences shape personality development as well as children’s social and cognitive development.