People

Director

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, EdD

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang is a Professor of Education, Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, Fahmy Attallah Professor of Humanistic Psychology, and Director of the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education (CANDLE). She studies the psychological and neurobiological development of emotion and self-awareness, and connections to social, cognitive and moral development in educational settings. She uses cross-cultural, interdisciplinary studies of narratives and feelings to uncover experience-dependent neural mechanisms contributing to identity, intrinsic motivation, deep learning, and generative, creative and abstract thought. Her work has a special focus on adolescents from low-SES communities, and she involves youths from these communities as junior scientists in her work.

A former urban public junior high-school science teacher, she earned her doctorate at Harvard University in 2005 in human development and psychology and completed her postdoctoral training in social-affective neuroscience with Antonio Damasio in 2008. Since then she has received numerous awards for her research and impact on education and society, among them an Honor Coin from the U.S. Army, a Commendation from the County of Los Angeles, a Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences editorial board, and early career achievement awards from the AERA, the AAAS, the APS, the International Mind, Brain and Education Society (IMBES), and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences Foundation (FABBS).

Immordino-Yang was a 2018-2019 Spencer Foundation mid-career fellow and a member of the National Academy of Education as of 2023.

She served on the U.S. National Academy of Sciences committee writing How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts and Cultures, and on the Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development.

Publication Spotlight

REPORT

Immordino-Yang served on the U.S. National Academy of Sciences committee writing this report which highlights the dynamic process of learning throughout the life span and identifies frontiers in which more research is needed to pursue an even deeper understanding of human learning .

The Brain Basis for Integrated Social, Emotional, and Academic Development

BRIEF

Immordino-Yang served on the Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development, writing this policy brief which explores how emotions and relationships drive learning and are a fundamental part of how our brains develop.

Emotions, Learning, and the Brain

BOOK

Immordino-Yang served on the Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development, writing this policy brief which explores how emotions and relationships drive learning and are a fundamental part of how our brains develop.

Scientific Director

Xiao-Fei Yang, PhD

Xiao-Fei Yang is Scientific Director of the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education (CANDLE) and is an Assistant Professor of Research at the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and USC Rossier School of Education. Yang plays an important role in the overall planning, design and implementation of the lab’s ongoing projects, including protocol design, data collection and analysis, and manuscript preparation. She also provides guidance and mentorship to high school, undergraduate, and graduate research assistants who work in the lab.

Yang’s current work is an interdisciplinary project aimed at identifying teacher-level characteristics, practices, and mindsets to increase the development of thinking skills in students. Using an innovative design, that integrates behavioral and biometrics data collected during real-life classroom interactions and neurophysiological data collected in a controlled laboratory setting, the project attempts to characterize teachers’ implicit, potentially nonconscious patterns of processing that are hard to pinpoint with classroom observations and self-reports. Her research aims to understand the neurobiological bases of social emotional experience and their development in sociocultural contexts, with a focus on adolescence. She specializes in psychophysiological and neuroimaging techniques and has extensive experience relating qualitative analyses of natural behavior to neurophysiological dynamics.

Yang earned a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and a PhD in Neuroscience from USC.

 

Post-Doctoral Researchers

Christina Kundrak

Christina Kundrak, PhD

Christina Kundrak received her PhD in Urban Education Policy from USC Rossier School of Education. Kundrak was previously a high school science teacher and also worked in educational technology. She attended Pepperdine University, where she earned her bachelor’s in psychology. Kundrak’s research interests include neurobiological and psychological factors affecting student and teacher beliefs, motivation, engagement, and learning and the application of the aforementioned topics to educational systems to better support students in their academic and personal growth. Her current projects include an observational and neuroimaging study of teachers, funded by the Templeton Foundation and new work from the Jacobs Foundation. For more information, visit http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2019/08/how_top_teachers_connect_with_students.html  

Amir Hossein Ghaderi, PhD

Amir Hossein Ghaderi is a researcher with a diverse academic background in physics and cognitive neuroscience. He completed his MSc in Physics and later pursued his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience in Iran. His research interests primarily revolve around human perception, emotion, learning, and brain networks. His work aims to contribute to the understanding of the relationships between emotion, perception, and the complex interactions within functional/structural brain networks.

Publication Spotlight

Andrew Dayton, PhD

Andrew Dayton received his PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.  

Publication Spotlight

Rodrigo Miranda Riveros, PhD

Rodrigo Miranda Riveros received his PhD in Psychology from USC. He is a neuroscientist who combines neuroimaging, behavioral and interview data to investigate how adolescents formulate life goals that are based on youth’s core values and that seek to transform the world. Using a mixed-methods approach, Riveros examines how the articulation of value-based life goals relate to the function of neural systems that are critical for processing basic rewards, such as food and sex. In addition, Riveros investigates how the formulation of value-based goals can be supported by intergenerational storytelling, using a well-controlled art-based psychological intervention that promotes reflecting on life narratives and shared values. Riveros is a psychologist from the Universidad de Chile, and holds a master’s degree in Cognitive Neuropsychology and Rehabilitation from the University of Birmingham (UK). For more information about intergenerational storytelling and its benefits, visit https://dailytrojan.com/2018/03/30/sages-and-seekers-organization-promotes-art-education/

Publication Spotlight

Riveros, R., Bakchine, S., Pillon, B., Poupon, F., Miranda, M., & Slachevsky, A. (2019) Fronto-Subcortical Circuits for Cognition and Motivation: Dissociated Recovery in a Case of Loss of Psychic Self-Activation. Frontiers in Pyschology, 9 (JAN), art. no. 2781. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02781

Research Assistants

Katrina Hilliard

Data Analyst

Katrina Hilliard is a data analyst who specializes in neuroimaging analysis. She attended King’s College London, where she earned a master’s degree in neuroimaging and worked in the Neurodegeneration Imaging Lab. Prior to joining CANDLE, Katrina worked in the Brain & Music lab at the USC Brain and Creativity Institute as the Neuroimaging Data Coordinator. She is interested in the functional and structural development of the brain, and how that relates to emotional functioning in children and adolescents. She is also interested in how environmental stressors impact brain development in healthy adolescents.

Graduate Students

Emily Gonzalez

Emily Gonzalez is an Educational Psychology PhD student in the Urban Education Policy program at USC Rossier School of Education. Gonzalez previously worked as a researcher at Project Zero. She earned her EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and her BS in Elementary Education from Wheelock College. Gonzalez is interested in uncovering the neuropsychological processes engaged in effective K-12 teaching practices and dispositions, and how they impact learners’ agentic development of interests, scholarly and social identities, and ability to self-author and engage with societal complexities.

Gina Nadaya

Gina Nadaya is currently a Developmental Psychology PhD student at USC. She received her EdM degree in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and her BA in Psychology from UCLA. Nadaya is primarily interested in examining how culture and early life experiences influence children’s developmental outcomes (e.g., brain growth and development, mental health outcomes, peer relationships, and academic outcomes). She was born in Cordoba, Argentina, and is a strong advocate for the rights of the undocumented community. Nadaya’s ultimate goal is to use her research to promote immigration reform and to improve accessibility to mental health treatment. 

Elly Pueschel

Elly Pueschel is a recent graduate with a PhD in Developmental Psychology at USC. She received her BA in Psychology at San Diego State University in 2018, and her MA in Psychology in 2020 from USC. Pueschel is broadly interested in utilizing interdisciplinary methodology to investigate the impact of school experience on children’s cognitive, social-emotional, and neurobiological development. Her current research includes a study on how children monitor and react to their own errors.

Mariana De Franca Steil

Mariana De Franca Steil is an Educational Psychology Ph.D. student in the Urban Education program at USC Rossier School of Education. She earned her BA in Pedagogy from the Federal University of Paraná, in Brazil, where she worked as a preschool and elementary teacher. Steil is interested in student-teacher relationships in classroom contexts considering their neuropsychological, emotional, and cultural complexities. She has also participated in research with South Brazilian native populations and is interested in reinforcing Indigenous visibility.  

 

David Johnson

David Johnson is a third year PhD student in the Neuroscience Graduate Program at USC. He received his BA in Neuroscience from Vanderbilt University in 2014 and his MA in Comparative Human Development from the University of Chicago in 2020. Johnson is interested in how environmental factors such as adverse experiences can shape brain development throughout adolescence. He previously worked on the Mouse Connectome Project under the direction of Dr. Hong Wei Dong.

Administrative Staff

Lisa Luchetta

Lisa Luchetta earned a Master of Arts in Film and Television from the University of California, Los Angeles with a specialization in production and cultural studies within the UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television in the Department of Film, Television & Digital Media. Her academic journey also includes a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of California, Los Angeles. lluchett@usc.edu