Lab Members
EMOTION, HEALTH, AND PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY LAB AT YALE UNIVERSITY
Wendy Berry Mendes
Lab Director
Dr. Mendes is the Charles and Dorathea Dilley Professor at Yale University. Her research questions sit at the intersection of social, personality, and biological psychology and primarily concerns questions regarding embodiment: how emotions, thoughts, and intentions are experienced in the body and how bodily responses shape and influence thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. Some current research areas include coping with stigma and discrimination, dyadic intergroup interactions, affect contagion, mind-body relations across the life course, effects of stress on decision-making, and stress management interventions.
Yoobin Park
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Yoobin Park is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, working with the Network for Emotional Well-being team. Before coming to UCSF, she completed her PhD in Psychology at the University of Toronto. Her research has focused on well-being as a partnered individual (e.g., examining factors contributing to a high-quality romantic relationship) and as a single individual (e.g., examining factors contributing to a fulfilling single life). She is broadly interested in understanding processes surrounding changes in well-being and their consequences. You can learn more about her work at https://yoobinpark.weebly.com/
Yoobin’s CV: Google Docs
Kimberly J. Martin
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Kimberly J. Martin is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She was previously a UC President’s Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. She earned her Ph.D. in Social Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She graduated with honors and high distinction from the University of California, Berkeley, with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Dance and Performance Studies. Her research investigates the impact of injustice and the importance of history to the experiences, perceptions, and health of members of minoritized groups, particularly in the healthcare system. Additionally, her research aims to increase the recognition of and action toward dismantling systemic and individual injustice. You can learn more about her work at drkimjmartin.com.
Kim’s CV: Google Docs
Maria Monroy
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Maria Monroy is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She was previously a Ford Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. She completed her Ph.D. in Social/Personality Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She also received her B.A. from UC Berkeley as the top undergraduate in psychology— with highest honors in psychology and high distinction in general scholarship. Maria’s research covers multiple facets of emotion science, such as expression, experience, and culture. A large portion of her attention is devoted to investigating the beneficial effects of discrete positive emotions, such as awe, on stress, social connection, health, and well-being.
Maria’s CV: Google Docs
Val Wongsomboon
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Val Wongsomboon is a Susan Nolen-Hoeksema Postdoctoral Associate at Yale Psychology Department. She got her Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on sexual health and well-being, sexual well-being disparities, and close relationships among historically marginalized and stigmatized populations as well as those underrepresented in sex and relationship research, such as LGBTQ+ and single (unpartnered) individuals. You can learn more about her work at https://valwongsomboon.weebly.com/.
Jieni Zhou
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Jieni Zhou is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She earned her Ph.D. in Social Psychology with a concentration in Quantitative Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also holds a master’s degree in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University and graduated with honors and high distinction from Bryn Mawr College with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Education. Her research focuses on the intersection of positive emotions and social relationships, with a particular emphasis on co-experienced positive emotion. Her work aims to understand how co-experienced positive emotion influences mental, physical, relational, and community well-being. Additionally, her research explores ways (e.g., high-quality listening) to nurture these communal emotional experiences.
Jieni’s CV: Google Docs
Mark S. Chen
POST-DOCTORAL FELLOW
Mark S. Chen is a Susan Nolen-Hoeksema Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. He received his B.Sc. in Psychology from Tsinghua University in 2017 and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University in 2024. Before joining the lab, he completed his clinical internship at Weill Cornell Medical College. His research centers on adversity, emotion regulation processes, and affective psychopathology across diverse contexts and development. In the EHP lab, he focuses on how adversity shapes physiological reactivity to emotional experiences and how to optimize emotion regulation success in the context of stigma and discrimination. You can learn more about his work here.
Riley Hoffman
Lab Manager
Riley Hoffman is the Lab Manager for the Emotion, Health, and Psychophysiology Lab at Yale University. She graduated from Harvard University in May 2023 with a B.A. in Psychology. In the future, Riley plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Psychology. Her research interests lie at the intersection of psychology, health, and society.
Contact Riley at riley.hoffman@yale.edu
Paige Freeburg
Graduate Student
Paige Freeburg is in the Social/Personality Psychology Ph.D. program at Yale University. She graduated from Baylor University in 2022 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Dance. She then worked as the lab manager for the Laboratory on Social and Affective Neuroscience at Georgetown University. Her research interests lie in emotion, health, psychophysiology, and embodiment. Her research aims to further explore mind-body connections (i.e., the way our physiology shapes and is shaped by our emotions, health, and social experiences).
Paige’s CV: Google Docs
Sienna Bland-Abramson
GRADUATE STUDENT
Sienna Bland-Abramson is a graduate student in the Social Psychology area at Yale. She graduated with the highest distinction and college honors from the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.A. in Psychology. Before joining the EHP Lab, she worked with Dr. Naomi Eisenberger in the Social Affective Neuroscience Lab at UCLA. She is interested in examining the bidirectional biological and psychological mechanisms of stress, and aims to clarify how these mechanisms influence emotional well-being, social connection, and physical health.
Zack Liu
MPH STUDENT
Zhiyuan Zack Liu is a Horstmann Scholar and an M.P.H. candidate in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department at Yale University, where he concentrates in statistical modeling. Before joining Yale, he graduated with Distinction from Duke University with a dual-degree B.S. in Behavioral Science and Psychology (Magna Cum Laude). His research focuses on laboratory-based experiments, employing both behavioral and physiological measures to investigate emotions, health, and cognitive processes.
Doris Chi
MPH STUDENT
Doris is a first-year MPH student in Social and Behavioral Sciences at YSPH. She graduated magna cum laude from Smith College in 2024 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Applied Statistics. Her research interests involve the impact of stigma on people's mental health, specifically people who hold multiple marginalized identities and the LGBTQ+ community. She hopes to pursue a PhD in Social/Health Psychology.
Yaz Liow
THESIS STUDENT
Yaz is a senior from New York City double majoring in Psychology and Comparative Literature with a certificate in Education Studies. They are particularly interested in studying the physiological effects of stigma among minority populations. Yaz is conducting their senior thesis on the correlations between loneliness and physiological synchrony following awe interventions. After graduation, they hope to pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology. Outside of the lab, Yaz can be found rock climbing, reading, or playing the flute. They have many pictures of their very rectangular dog which are available upon request (but they'll show you without asking anyway).
Odessa Goldberg
Thesis Student
Odessa Goldberg is a senior in Branford College from Mill Valley, California. She studies Cognitive Science with a certificate in data science. She currently serves as Co-President of the Yale Hillel Student Board. Odessa caught the research bug her junior year of high school and wants to continue with research for the rest of her life. She’s super interested in interdisciplinary methods studying the intersections of awe, psychedelics, religion, and mental health. Other passions include fantasy novels, art history, trivia, poetry and any sort of logistics.
Breanna Brownson
Thesis Student
Breanna is a senior majoring in cognitive science at Yale on a pre-medical track. Her research interests include clinical psychology, social psychology, and pediatric psychiatry, but she is currently focused on characterizing challenge and threat responses. Outside of the lab, she enjoys playing with her cat, Mauna Loa. She also currently serves as president of the Alliance for Dance at Yale, Danceworks, and Peristalsis.
Alanna Rivera
Thesis Student
Alanna is from New Jersey, and she is a senior double majoring in Psychology and Film & Media studies. She loves to sing, sketch, listen to music, read, and take long walks. She is interested in the intersectionality between social psychology and clinical psychology, and the vulnerability of memory in trauma situations. Some groups that she is a part of on campus are YGC (Yale Gospel Choir), Despierta Boricua (the Puerto Rican group on campus), and HAVEN free clinic.
Kyra Bonta
Thesis Student
Kyra is a senior at Yale University pursuing a major in psychology-neuroscience. Her research interests include stress, sleep, racial health disparities, neurodegenerative disorders and how mental states are reflected physiologically. She has previously researched the associations between the APOE genotype, plasma neurofilament light chain (NfL), and cognition in autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease. In the future, Kyra plans to attend graduate school and pursue a career as a clinical neuropsychologist.