Lab Updates

7/24/25 

Congrats to Dr. Kate Luken-Raz for accepting a postdoctoral position at the University of Alberta! They will be working with Dr. Wendy Hoglund at the PEERS Lab. Best of luck to Kate, we will miss them!

6/12/25

Our lab is creating a teacher facilitation app to accompany our Developing Inclusive Youth (DIY) school-based program! We are collaborating with an interdisciplinary team of Ed Tech scholars, developmental scientists, programmers, information scientists, and entrepreneurial experts, and are funded by TedCo Maryland Innovation Initiative.

Welcome to Dr. Einat Elizarov, Fulbright Scholar from the University of Haifa, Israel!  Einat will join our lab for 2025-2026! She is studying young children's resource allocation in inter-wealth peer contexts!

5/22/25

Congratulations to our 2025 Ph.D. graduates, Dr. Kat Yee and Dr. Kate Luken-Raz!

Congratulations to our 2025 baccalaureate graduates, Sheisa Naderi and Sophia Moore!

Congratulations to Sophia Moore for accepting a position as Lab Manager for the Big Emotions Across Development Lab with Dr. Lea Dougherty!

5/13/25: 

The Developing Inclusive Youth program was nominated as a Finalist for UMD's Invention of the Year Award in the Social Innovation category!

4/23/25:

Anusha Kumar, Sheisa Naderi, Katy Crispens, Mazelie Passmore and Sophia Moore presented research from our lab at UMD's Undergraduate Research Day.

Ally Bruner was accepted to UMD's Student-Proposed Innovation & Research Experience (SPIRE) Program, and will be working in our lab for Summer 2025!

4/3/25:

Melanie Killen is speaking for the Bahá’í Chair For World Peace on the science of reducing prejudice in childhood. The talk is in room Pyon Su 2108, Stamp Student Union at the University of Maryland, College Park. 

3/27/25:

Congrats to Kate Luken Raz and Kat Yee for passing their PhD. final defense and to Sophia Moore for passing her Honors Thesis defense!

1/30/25:

Congratulations to Marley Forbes who received a Clara Mayo Grant Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) for her research proposal on "Children's Reasoning about Confronting Gender Bias in Science Contexts" for Fall 2024!

7/24/24:

Congratulations to Hannah Holloway who was invited to join AmeriCorps NCCC in Sacramento, California!

6/17/24:

Congratulations to Emily Hickey who received a position as a Genetic Counseling Associate at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, NE!

5/6/24:

Congratulations to Nathaniel Pearl, who will be our new Lab Manager starting this June! Nathaniel will be graduating from the University of Maryland this month with a bachelor's degree in Human Development and a minor in LGBTQ Studies.

4/30/24:

Congratulations to Sophia Moore for being awarded the Office of Undergraduate Research "Excellence in Research Award" for her poster presentation Age-related Differences Regarding Spontaneous Reasoning about Social Exclusion at this year's Undergraduate Research Day!

4/15/24:

Congratulations to Jonquil Rumberger who will be starting a PhD in Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology at Boston College working with Paul Poteat. Best of luck to Jonquil! We will miss her!

Congratulations to Melanie Killen for her election to the National Academy of Education!

Anusha Kumar was accepted to UMD's Student-Proposed Innovation & Research Experience (SPIRE) Program, and will be working in our lab for Summer 2024!

Hannah Holloway and Sophia Moore presented research from our lab at UMD's Undergraduate Research Day.

2/26/24: 

Congratulations to Ricardo Calvo on starting his new position as a research associate at EAB. Ricardo was an undergraduate research assistant for over a year as well as a human development intern!

We are excited to welcome Carmen Barth, doctoral student at the University of Konstanz, Germany to our lab!

10/16/23: 

We are excited to welcome Elena Kilby to the lab as our new Post-Baccalaureate Research Assistant, September 2023! 

Thank you to the Scientific Advisory Board for visiting us September 8-10 and providing feedback on what we have been working on so far!

Congratulations to Carmen Barth, doctoral student at the University of Konstanz, Germany, who was awarded a German Academic Exchange Service Award for visiting our lab during the Spring 2024 semester!

5/19/23:

Dr. Riley N. Sims and Dr. Jacquelyn Glidden, doctoral students in our lab, received their PhD in Human Development and Quantitative Methodology this month.  Congrats to Riley and Jacquelyn!

We are happy to announce that Dr. Buse Gönül, a Fulbright Fellow from Turkey with us this year, received the Society for Research in Child Development Small Grant Award for Early Career Scholars! https://www.srcd.org/news/announcing-2023-recipients-small-grants-program-early-career-scholars

Sophia Moore, an undergraduate Research Assistant received a Maryland Summer Scholars fellowship and Hannah Holloway received a NSF summer stipend to work in our lab summer of 2023!

Melanie Killen and Kathryn Yee received a Faculty-Student Research Award to work on a collaborative project with Buse Gönül!

Other news:

1/12/23:

Congratulations to Elise Kaufman who received a Clara Mayo Grant Award from The Society for the Psychology Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) for her research proposal on "Children's Evaluations about Teacher and Peer Bias in the Classroom Context," for 2023!

Congratulations to Riley Sims who was selected as one of the university of Maryland's Outstanding Graduate Assistant Award for AY 2022-23!

Congratulations to Kathryn Yee and Melanie Killen who received a Faculty-Student Research Award (FSRA) from the UMD Graduate School for a project with Fulbright Scholar, Buse Gönül, from Turkey for 2023-2024!

Congratulations to Laura Elenbaas, PhD from our lab in 2017, who won the SRCD Early Career Research Award for 2023!

9/2/22:

We are excited to announce that previous lab PhD student and current NSF postdoctoral scholar Amanda Burkholder has accepted a tenure track faculty position in the Psychology Department at Furman University!

Our lab manager Arvid Samuelson has been admitted to Cornell University's Developmental Psychology Ph.D. program. He will be working with Professor Audun Dahl! We will miss him! Good luck!

We are pleased to welcome Jonquil Rumberger from UC Santa Cruz, who will join us as our new lab manager, June 2022!

Dr. Buse Gönül received a Fulbright Fellowship from Turkey (one of 8 nation-wide recipients) to study with our lab from September 2022 to June 2023! She will conduct a study on children’s conceptions of social inequalities in geographic regions in Turkey and the U.S.  We are looking forward to her arrival!

5/16/22: 

Leon Li, a previous undergraduate research assistant in the lab, just received his Ph.D. from Duke University working with Mike Tomasello. Go Leon!

4/14/22: 

Congratulations to Jacob Glassman on his admittance to Boston College Developmental Psychology Ph.D. program! He will be working with Professors Katherine McAuliffe and Liane Young!

Congratulations to Jacob Glassman, one of our most senior research assistants, for receiving the very prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Award!

Natalie Bartholet, Emily Berman, and Ameya Sriram all received the Maryland Summer Scholars Research grant; we went 3 for 3 this year!

Doctoral student Jacquelyn Glidden received the Ann Wylie Dissertation Fellowship which we are very excited about!

Doctoral student Riley Sims also received the Beaumont Award for an Outstanding Dissertation!

Media:

1/6/21: 

Click here to watch the talk that Professor Melanie Killen gave for a SRCD invited lecture on diversity!

6/10/20:

Congratulations to Jeanine Grütter, a former Swiss NSF Post-Doc in our lab, who had her recent Child Development paper featured in a 

Blog post! Here’s the link!

10/17/19:

Click here to read an article about our NSF and NIH funded prejudice intervention projects published in the American Educator.

Click here to see a feature piece in the UMD Research Roundup about our lab’s study, Children’s and Adolescents’ Evaluations of Intergroup Exclusion in Interracial and Interwealth Peer Contexts, by Burkholder, Elenbaas, & Killen, 2019!

Lab conference papers were presented this past year at the meetings of the following organizations: Association for Moral Education,  Cognitive Development Society, Jean Piaget Society, Society for Research in Child Development Off-Year Conference,.