SLL - Key Persons


Aaron Chuey

From birth, we occupy a world filled with people interacting and communicating. As observers, how do we make sense of communicative exchanges in order to learn from and about others? I study the inferences children draw from observing other people communicate, including what speakers and listeners know, where that knowledge came from, and how exogenous factors, such as auditory noise, might alter the outcome of a communicative exchange. I am also interested in how, as adults, we can levy these abilities to learn from diverse forms of communication, including broadcasting, messaging, and social media.

Alicia Leong

Job Titles:
  • Summer Intern, 2017 )

Alyssa Lombardo

Job Titles:
  • Research Assistant

Andrew McCabe

Job Titles:
  • Research Assistant

Aneesa Conine-Nakano

Job Titles:
  • Lab Manager

Angelina Garron

Job Titles:
  • Research Assistant

Anne Roche

Job Titles:
  • Summer Intern, 2018 )

Auguste Seong

Job Titles:
  • Honors Student

Brandon Carrillo

Job Titles:
  • Research Coordinator

Catherine Qing

I graduated from Indiana University in 2022 with a B.S. in Psychology and Informatics, and I am now pursuing my M.S. in Symbolic Systems at Stanford. Coming from a background in social psychology, I hope to learn more about how both children learn, reason, and communicate about our social world. I am currently exploring how noise can impact children's communication, specifically how their epistemic understanding of the consequences of noise impacts their own behavior.

Charlotte Ostrow

Job Titles:
  • Summer Intern

Desmond Ong

Job Titles:
  • Graduate Student, Coco Lab / SSNL ) - Research Scientist, Institute for High Performance Computing, Singapore

Eban Ebssa

I am a junior at Stanford majoring in Symbolic Systems, and I'm interested in many topics, including how people develop motivation and resilience. In the SLL, I develop iGibson VR environments to study how people reason about themselves in virtual worlds.

Emily Tang

Job Titles:
  • Research Assistant

Ginnie Kim

Job Titles:
  • Summer Intern, 2018 )

Grace Bennett-Pierre

Job Titles:
  • CSLI Summer Intern, 2015 )

Grace Keene

I graduated from UC Berkeley where I completed my BA in philosophy and a minor in early childhood development and learning science. I was a research assistant in the Gopnik Lab where I engaged with studies that seek to understand the factors that influence children's decisions to explore or exploit their environment. I am broadly interested in expanding my understanding of different approaches in the field. Children's development of morality and beliefs about right and wrong also interests me. I am excited to learn more about children's learning, behavior, and beliefs.

Griffin Dietz

Griffin was a PhD student in the lab, supported by NSF GRFP. She defended her dissertation in May 2022, titled Cognitively appropriate and readily accessible computing education technology for young learners.

Huda Akef

Job Titles:
  • Research Assistant

Isabel Nichoson

Job Titles:
  • Summer Intern, 2018 )

Isabel Won

Job Titles:
  • CSLI Summer Intern

Isabelle Morris

Job Titles:
  • Honors Student

Jessa Stegall

Job Titles:
  • Research Coordinator

Joseph Outa

Job Titles:
  • Research Coordinator

Kat Adams Shannon

Kat studies how young children adapt their attention and learning behaviors to best match different early environments, with particular focus on understanding variability and strengths in contexts of early adversity. A key aim of her research is to create and collaborate on innovative uses of technology and statistical methods to support education and developmental science.

Katelynn Ellam

Job Titles:
  • Research Assistant

Libby Rouffy


May Tran

Job Titles:
  • Summer Intern, 2018 )

Maya Jones

Job Titles:
  • CSLI Summer Intern, 2017 )

Megan Merrick

Job Titles:
  • Research Coordinator

Meghan Dontha

I am a senior at Stanford studying Psychology and minoring in Biology and Data Science. I'm currently working on the EALS project with Dr. Kat Adams Shannon. I'm interested in exploring how children adapt their behavior and emotions in response to adversity and, down the line, exploring the implications of experiencing early life adversity in a clinical context.

Michael Henry Tessler

Job Titles:
  • Graduate Student, Coco Lab ) - Postdoctoral Researcher, Computational Psycholinguistics Lab, MIT

Michelle Wang

Job Titles:
  • CSLI Summer Intern, 2016 )

Natalia Velasco

Job Titles:
  • CSLI Summer Intern

Natalie Wu

Job Titles:
  • Summer Intern, 2017 )

Peter Zhu

Job Titles:
  • CSLI Summer Intern
Humans are active learners and teachers - we integrate information from our environment, reason over it, and transmit it to others. I am interested in the processes and representations that enable this ability and their foundations in development. I hope to use a wide variety of methods to uncover more about how both children and adults learn and reason about our social world.

Robert Hawkins

Job Titles:
  • Graduate Student, Coco Lab ) - Postdoctoral Researcher, Princeton University

Ron Anderson

Job Titles:
  • Research Assistant

Sajjad Torabian

Job Titles:
  • Research Assistant

Stephen Sanders

Job Titles:
  • Lab Manager

Sumudu Rathnayake

Job Titles:
  • Research Assistant

Suzannah Wistreich

I am a junior at Stanford majoring in Computer Science with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence and minoring in Psychology. I am interested in how humans are able to learn through inference and develop probabilistic reasoning about the world around them. In the SLL, I'm currently exploring how children make epistemic inferences by observing the language and actions of others.

Xi Jia Zhou

Job Titles:
  • Research Cordinator ) - PhD Student in GSE, Stanford University

Xiaoqian Li

Job Titles:
  • Visiting Graduate Student

Xuan Zhao

Job Titles:
  • Graduate Student, Malle Lab at Brown University ) - Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Yena Kim

Job Titles:
  • Summer Intern, 2017 )

Yuan Chang Leong

Job Titles:
  • Graduate Student, SSNL ) - Postdoctoral Researcher, UC Berkeley