May 2025 was a busy time for the ECI Lab!

The ECI Lab attended this year's Society for Research in Child Development biennial meeting in Minneapolis, MN. Graduate student Maylee Montagut Ascanio presented her very first poster titled, "Counting on Gestures: Nudging Families' Gesture Use during Arithmetic Tasks." Congratulations, Maylee! Graduate student Sivan Lurie also presented her talk titled, "Beliefs at Play: Examining Parental Beliefs and Praise during Preschool Math Interactions." We are so proud of you, Sivan!

Dr. Gillian Grose graduated this May and wrapped up her time at UMD and the lab. We will miss you Gillian!

We finished out the semester with an end-of-the-year lab party, thank you to all of the Spring 2025 members of ECI Lab for all the hard work this semester!

Lab photo:

(Top row, from left to right):  Graduate students Sivan Lurie, Dr. Gillian Grose, Lab Manager Ninie Asad, RA Ayelet Unguru, Graduate Student Maylee Montagut Ascanio, RAs Melannie Valenzuela and Cassidy Weeks.

(Bottom row, from left to right): RA Taylor Sarvis, Dr. Geetha Ramani, Lab Manager Katie Nguyen, and RAs Cricia Villanueva, Talia Silbermann, and Rachel Polotsky.

In April, graduate student Gillian Grose successfully defended her dissertation titled "The Impact of Family Math Week: A Playful Online Math Intervention." Congratulations, Dr. Grose!

RA Cassidy Weeks, who has been with the lab since Spring of 2024, presented her very first poster at UMD's Undergraduate Research Day. Cassidy's poster, "Reading into Gender: Patterns in Home Math and Literacy Activities", is based on data she helped to collect for an ongoing project in the ECI Lab. Shoutout to Cassidy and her student mentors Sivan Lurie and Ninie Asad for their work on the poster!

This month, the ECI Lab also did some community outreach for College Park Nursery School's Trash-A-Thon! 

Graduate student Sivan Lurie was also awarded the NSF GRFP for the STEM Education and Learning Research - Mathematics Education category. Go Sivan!!

This year, the ECI Lab attended the Mathematical Cognition and Learning Society (MCLS) Conference that was held in Washington D.C. at Gallaudet University.  

First photo: Post day-two of the conference, current lab members got to meet and reunite with some ECI Lab alumni over dinner!

(From left to right):  Dr. Tiffany Yang, Graduate student Sivan Lurie, Dr. Nicole  Scalise, Graduate Student Gillian Grose, Dr. Mary DePascale, Dr. Sarah Eason, Lab Manager Ninie Asad, Graduate Student Maylee Montagut Ascanio, Dr. Erica Zippert, and Dr. Geetha Ramani)

Second photo: Graduate student Gillian Grose presented at the conference titled, "Do Words Matter? Investigating How Language Shapes Children’s Engagement in Math". Great job, Gillian!

Third photo: Graduate student Sivan Lurie presented a lightning talk titled, "Multidimensionality of home math engagement: examined through a comparison of preterm and full-term toddlers". Amazing work, Sivan!

Fourth photo: Lab Manager Ninie Asad had a poster titled "Associations Among Quantitative and Qualitative Dimensions of the Home Math Environment and Young Children’s Math Skills" from her time at the Learning and Development Lab at Virginia Tech.