People

Panayiota (Pani) Kendeou

Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Guy Bond Chair in Reading, Department of Educational Psychology

Pani develops and examines the efficacy of educational technologies to facilitate learning and assessment of processes and outcomes at scale. She is also exploring new approaches to reducing the impact of misinformation and developing digital media literacy.

Caitlin Mills

Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Psychology

Caitlin’s research is at the intersection of cognitive psychology, computer science, and education. She is particularly interested in the antecedents and consequences of mind wandering, boredom, and engagement. Other interests include investigating affective states and task-unrelated thought in educational contexts, such as during complex learning from educational technologies.

Laura Allen

Assistant Professor and Bonnie Westby Huebner Chair, Department of Educational Psychology

Laura leverages theories and methodologies from cognitive science, learning science, linguistics, and education to examine the ways in which individuals learn and communicate through text and discourse. She is particularly interested in the use of computational linguistics approaches to glean theoretical insights into students’ learning processes as well as to develop and refine adaptive educational technologies.

David DeLiema

Assistant Professor,
Department of Educational Psychology

David studies how moments of failure, playful experiences, embodied cognition, and epistemic cognition shape learning in computer science, family play outdoors, video games, and other STEM domains. Through research-practice partnerships, his research examines cognitive and psychological processes within the context of social interaction, and often takes place within technology-rich settings.

Meixi

Assistant Professor,
Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development

Meixi (she/they) designs learning at the edges of school, families, and lands towards Indigenous futures across Thailand, México and most recently Mní Sota Makoce. Meixi studies how land-based stories, Indigenous mobilities, and original and digital technologies can support human learning, becoming, and collective wellbeing alongside the rest of the living world.

Xiaoran Sun

Assistant Professor, Department of Family Social Science

Xiaoran is interested in how the integration of different data types and methodological advances can further our understanding of family systems and adolescent development situated in larger social ecologies—including sociocultural and digital contexts. Specifically, she uses high-intensity smartphone data to study how digital technology may impact family dynamics and adolescent development, and leverages machine learning methods to make long-term predictions of adolescents’ future achievement outcomes based on their early experiences.

Keisha Varma

Associate Vice Provost, Office for Equity and Diversity
Associate Professor, Department of Educational Psychology

Keisha Varma’s current research projects focus on how to improve access to high quality STEM experiences and how to provide equitable STEM learning experiences. In her work, she is exploring the ways that innovative approaches within the field of learning analytics can advance our knowledge of disparities in STEM education experiences and improve the ways that we address persistent inequities.

Dongyeop Kang (DK)

Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering

DK develops human-centric language technologies. He also leads the Minnesota Natural Language Processing (NLP) group which develops interdisciplinary methods for NLP models based on theories in linguistics and cognitive/social sciences and builds interactive NLP systems for scientists, creative writers, and language learners. 

Joseph A. Konstan

Distinguished McKnight Professor and Distinguished University Teaching Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Associate Dean for Research, College of Science and Engineering

Joseph’s research addresses human-computer interaction issues, including personalizing the learning experience, on-line community information systems, computer systems to improve health, and ethics of online research.

Andrew Zieffler

Teaching Associate Professor, Department of Educational Psychology

Andy designs curricular materials to engage teachers and students in the content of and data science. He also studies how students and teachers engage with these materials in order to better understand how to support the learning process.

Craig G. Anderson

Department of Educational Psychology

Craig’s research focuses on the cognitive influences of video game play. Craig’s dissertation explored how players of a notoriously challenging video game, Cuphead, conceptualize and react to failure. Currently, he works on the Playful Problem Solving Project, investigating how young players solve problems in the puzzle game Baba is You.

Lingfei Luan

Lingfei Luan’s research interests lie in the perception and cognition of audio-visual information; her work has had a significant impact on film studies, audience behavior, and educational technology. She incorporates AI into her research, focusing on applications in medical care and using machine learning to predict viewer preferences. Her innovative methods have led to collaborations with industry leaders such as Hollywood cinematographer Thomas Ackerman. Recognized as one of the ‘Thirty Mentors of Women in STEM’ by the United Nations’ ITU in 2022.

Mengchen Su

Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Mengchen is interested in quantitative methods and applied machine learning for school improvement and whole child development in K-12 education, focusing on educational equity and diversity. Her current research evaluates the integration of school climate and social-emotional data into a K-12 dropout early warning system to support students’ perseverance and growth.

Aaron Wong

Department of Educational Psychology

Aaron’s research focuses on understanding how metacomprehension and mind wandering affect comprehension using a variety of techniques including eye movement monitoring, memory tests, and computational modeling. He is also interested in how metacognition affects learning in other areas besides comprehension, such as mathematics and skill
acquisition.

Nabil Ch

Department of Educational Psychology

Nabil’s research focuses on human-computer interaction within educational technologies. He is interested in disengagement detection and knowledge tracing, especially in remote learning platforms.

Heeryung Choi

Department of Educational Psychology

Heeryung primarily applies mixed methods, machine learning, and experimental approaches to (1) investigate the impacts of interventions on learner-AI interactions (e.g., Jupyter Notebook extension, AI hint chatbot), and (2) reconstruct learning traces using multimodal data, (e.g., computational data, transcripts).