People

Catherine Tamis-LeMonda

Professor of Applied Psychology
Faculty Page | Curriculum Vitae
Email: catherine.tamis-lemonda@nyu.edu

Karen Adolph

Professor of Psychology, Applied Psychology, and Neuroscience
Principal Investigator of Infant Action Lab
Faculty Page | Curriculum Vitae
Email: karen.adolph@nyu.edu                                                                                                                        

Catalina Suarez-Rivera

Postdoctoral Fellow
Curriculum Vitae | Email: cs6109@nyu.edu

Catalina obtained her PhD in Psychology from Indiana University and she joined the lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Fall 2019. Catalina investigates infant-caregiver naturalistic interactions moment-to-moment to uncover the real-time behaviors and mechanisms that build infant language and self-regulation day-in and day-out. Her research implements innovative behavioral coding of Spanish- and English-speaking families including interpersonal proximity, infant everyday words and meanings, joint engagement, complexity of infant play, and activity contexts. Catalina is expert in and teaches courses on statistics and sequential analyses on data in real-time at the level of individual events (e.g., bouts of infant play), including generalized mixed models and network analyses.                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Joshua Schneider

Postdoctoral Fellow
Curriculum Vitae | Email: jls863@nyu.edu

Joshua Schneider received his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh under the mentorship of Dr. Jana Iverson. Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow working with Drs. Karen Adolph and Catherine Tamis-LeMonda. His research program focuses on the study of developmental cascades in context by examining the bidirectional pathways that link advances in infant motor development to alterations in caregiver behavior. At NYU, Dr. Schneider investigates the social processes that shape infants’ expanding access the environment—how infants’ developing skills enable them to explore new  objects, places, and spaces; and in turn, how caregivers support this process. He was awarded an NSF SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to fund his postdoctoral work.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Orit Herzberg

Postdoctoral Fellow
Email: ohk2@nyu.edu

Orit Herzberg is a postdoctoral fellow with Drs. Karen Adolph and Catherine Tamis-LeMonda. She received her Physical Therapy Degree (2007) in the Department of Kinesiology, Mayor University, Santiago, Chile; her Masters (2015) in Motor Learning and Control in the Department of Biobehavioral Sciences, Teachers College, Columbia University; and her DPT (2017) from the Department of Physical Therapy, Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions. Her research focuses on the development of object manipulation and locomotion in infants’ everyday life. She is currently leading the PLAY project.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Lillian Masek

Postdoctoral Fellow
Curriculum Vitae | Email: lrm8906@nyu.edu

Lillian received her PhD in Psychology from Temple University working with Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek. She joined the lab as a postdoctoral researcher working with Dr. Cathie Tamis-LeMonda in the fall of 2021. Her research broadly examines how interactions with caregivers account for individual differences in infant language development and learning. At the Play and Learning Lab, Lillian is expanding her research to investigate caregiver-infant interactions in the home and how aspects of the environment shape these interactions.

Mackenzie Swirbul

PhD Candidate
Curriculum Vitae | Email: mss9219@nyu.edu

Mackenzie Swirbul is a doctoral student in the Developmental Psychology program working with Dr. Catherine Tamis-LeMonda. She is primarily interested in infant/toddler language (including early math and spatial language) and everyday play, and she is particularly interested in conducting research that informs on these domains for children and families in the context of poverty. Before arriving at NYU, Mackenzie worked at the Robin Hood Foundation as a senior program officer, funding and partnering with community-based organizations serving young children and families experiencing poverty in New York City.  

Kristy Lai

PhD Candidate
Curriculum Vitae | Email: khl393@nyu.edu

Kristy Lai (she/her) is a doctoral student and IES-PIRT fellow in the Developmental Psychology program working with Professor Catherine Tamis-LeMonda. Kristy broadly explores how young children across various sociocultural contexts learn language in the first few years of life. Specifically, she is interested in understanding the dynamics of everyday caregiver-child interactions and language learning among dual language learners. Prior to attending NYU, she worked as a researcher at WestEd, where she supported local and state projects in California on improving programs and policies for children, youth, and their families. Kristy received her B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Education from UC Berkeley.

Allie Mendelsohn

Curriculum Vitae | Email: am5236@nyu.edu

Allie Mendelsohn was a Project Coordinator for the Play & Language Lab, where she oversaw research activities and lab management. As part of the Everyday Learning Project and the Routine Language Intervention, she studied how parents support children’s math and language skills during daily routines and how interventions can leverage those routines to empower families. She is highly interested in how parents and families contribute to children’s development, particularly in the areas of mental health and resilience. Allie graduated in 2018 from Princeton University, where she worked as a research assistant in the Department of Psychology and wrote a thesis in the Creative Writing Program.             

Jacob Schatz

Curriculum Vitae | Email: schatz@nyu.edu

Jacob Schatz was a doctoral student with Dr. Catherine Tamis-LeMonda. He primarily investigated how parents and infants interact during everyday activities, in particular examining the behavioral and biological correlates observed in moments of shared engagement. Before arriving at NYU, Jacob worked for two years in the Temple Infant and Child Lab with Dr. Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, implementing a multimedia vocabulary intervention for preschoolers in Head Start classrooms in Philadelphia. Broadly, Jacob is interested in determining the characteristics of parents’ and teachers’ interactions with children that optimize learning and positive approaches to learning, and whether and how stressful experiences impede those optimal interactions.                  

Brianna Kaplan

Curriculum Vitae | Email: bk1820@nyu.edu

Brianna Kaplan is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. She was a doctoral student in the Cognition and Perception Program with Drs. Karen Adolph and Catherine Tamis-LeMonda. Prior to starting at NYU, she earned her B.A. in Psychology from UCLA and then worked as a research assistant in Dr. Adolph’s Infant Action Lab. She is interested in bridging the worlds of social and motor development. Specifically, she wants to know how children learn from others and incorporate that information with a constantly growing and changing body.    

Kelsey West

Curriculum Vitae | Email: kelsey.west@nyu.edu

Kelsey West is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alabama. She was a postdoctoral fellow with Drs. Catherine Tamis-LeMonda and Karen Adolph. She received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh under the supervision of Dr. Jana Iverson. Her research looks at the relation between motor and language development as a model system for understanding developmental cascades. Specifically, Dr. West investigates how motor achievements—like learning to walk—can open and/or constrain opportunities for communication and language learning. She was awarded an F32 NRSA from NICHD to fund her postdoctoral work.         

Katelyn Fletcher

Curriculum Vitae | Email: kkf3@nyu.edu

Katelyn Fletcher is a Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek at Temple University. She received her PhD in Developmental Psychology at New York University with Dr. Catherine Tamis-LeMonda and her B.S. in Human Development at Cornell University. Katelyn’s research explores how physical and social environments shape children’s play and learning. Her work integrates principles from developmental psychology and human-centered design to enhance settings for children, including childcare centers and public spaces. Katelyn is passionate about translational research and science communication. Her ultimate goal is to use research and intervention to enhance child development outcomes through supporting rich caregiver-child interactions in everyday places. 

Daniel Suh

Curriculum Vitae | Email: dan.suh@nyu.edu

Daniel Suh graduated with his doctoral degree in 2021 from the Developmental Psychology Program at NYU Steinhardt. His research focuses on how children’s social interactions with parents and their physical environment affects the development of children’s early math and spatial skills, which are linked to later STEM achievement and entry into the STEM fields. He is particularly interested in understanding how cultural differences in parent-child interactions influence children’s early math and spatial skills. Daniel received both his B.A. in Human Biology, Health, and Society and his M.A. in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University. Currently, Daniel and Dr. Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, his primary advisor, are collaborating with colleagues at Cornell University, University of Maryland, and University of Pittsburgh to better understand the early STEM development of children from diverse cultural backgrounds. 

Jennifer Rachwani

Curriculum Vitae | Email: jrp516@nyu.edu

Jennifer Rachwani was a postdoctoral fellow with Drs. Karen Adolph and Catherine Tamis-LeMonda in the Department of Psychology at NYU. Rachwani received her Physical Therapy Degree (2007) in the Department of Health Science at University of Malaga in Spain; her Masters (2009) in Neuro-Rehabilitation in the Department of Physical Therapy at San Antonio Catholic University in Spain; her Masters in Neuroscience (2010) from the Neuroscience Institute of Castilla y León in Spain; and her Ph.D. (2014) from the Department of Human Physiology & Neuroscience at University of Oregon, advised by Marjorie Woollacott. Her research focuses on the development of postural control and the coordination of visual and manual actions. During her time at NYU, she supervised the NIH “Hidden Affordances” grant awarded to Drs. Karen Adolph and Catherine Tamis-LeMonda examining children’s learning of everyday artifacts. Rachwani is joining the faculty at Hunter College in the Department of Physical Therapy in Fall 2019.  

Kelly Escobar

Curriculum Vitae | Email: kelly.escobar@nyu.edu

Kelly Escobar was a doctoral candidate in the Developmental Psychology program in the Applied Psychology Department. Kelly’s research specializes in language development in dual-language learning (DLL) populations, particularly for Latino children from immigrant families. Kelly uses a developmental process approach to understand how language grows and changes from birth to age 5, focusing on how culture and context influence individual differences in language development. Her dissertation explored how Latino infants are offered various opportunities to learn through interactions with various household members and engagement across daily routines, with a special focus on how older siblings support infants’ language learning. She joined the Dual Language and Literacy Lab in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Teachers College, Columbia University in 2019 as a Postdoctoral Associate with Dr. Carol Scheffner Hammer. She is currently working on a randomized-control study across NYC-DOE preschool classrooms examining the effects of a web-based coaching and professional development model to enhance language and literacy supports of preschool classroom teachers of dual language learners.

Rufan Luo

Curriculum Vitae | Email: rufan.luo@rutgers.edu

Dr. Rufan Luo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey – Camden. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from New York University, working with Dr. Catherine Tamis-LeMonda. She also worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek at Temple University. Dr. Luo’s work focuses on how children’s home and classroom learning experiences impact their language and school readiness outcomes, the social and cultural context of language learning, and caregiver-implemented language intervention.     

Yana Kuchirko

Curriculum Vitae | Email: yana.kuchirko@nyu.edu

Yana Kuchirko is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Brooklyn College, CUNY and is the director of the Culture and Child Development Lab (www.culturelabbc.com). She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from New York University under the supervision of Dr. Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, and her post-doc at the Institute of Human Development and Social Change at NYU with Dr. Lisa Gennetian. Yana Kuchirko’s work broadly examines the role of culture and context in child development.