Family Involvement Laboratory (FIL)

Rachel Ghosh is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in the Human Development program at the University of Maryland. She received a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan, with a minor in Community Action and Social Change. Her research interests include father-child relationships and the impacts of father involvement on children’s emotional and social development throughout the lifespan. She is also interested in interventions to promote healthy development and resilience among low-income children, and public policy work pertaining to the improved support of low-income families.

Angelica Alonso is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in the Human Development program at the University of Maryland. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from New York University and her Master of Arts in Human Development from Teachers College, Columbia University. Through her previous work as a research assistant at NYU's Center for Research on Culture, Development, and Education and as a research coordinator at NYU Langone Health, she became interested in the role that culture plays in shaping children’s early experiences. Her research interests include how Latino immigrant parents promote their young children’s development through everyday activities, as well as how parents’ documentation status affects parent-child interactions.

R. Pınar Karan is a first-year doctoral student in HDQM program. She received her B.A. in Psychology from Boğaziçi University in 2020. She continued her graduate education at Boğaziçi University under the supervision of Prof. Feyza Çorapçı in 2020. She has trained in art psychotherapy at Istanbul University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Mental Health and Diseases, Social Psychiatry Service since 2022. Her research interest includes father-child dyad relationships and the role of fathering in children’s socioemotional development. She is also interested in using art as a way of enriching communication in the family environment.

Dr. Jerry West is an affiliate at the University of Maryland, College of Education. His research interests include school readiness, child care and early education, mothers’ and fathers’ involvement in their children’s education, and kindergarten in the U.S. He received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1979 with a concentration in social psychology. Over his 30+ year career, he has designed and directed national cross-sectional studies of preschool, school-age children, and adults, and national longitudinal surveys of children’s development and learning from birth through middle childhood. He has trained hundreds of graduate students, junior and senior faculty from different disciplines on how to accurately use data from the national child development, early childhood and elementary school studies to answer key questions in child development and education. As a Senior Fellow at Mathematica Policy Research for more than 10 years, Dr. West directed the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) and other large-scale studies. Prior to joining Mathematica, he was the Director of the Early Childhood and Household Studies Program at the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

Duncan Fisher is an affiliate at the University of Maryland, College of Education. He has spent the last 23 years promoting change in policy, practice and culture to be more supportive of fatherhood. Throughout this time, evidence from research has been his key tool. In 2014 he set up the Child & Family Blog with Michael Lamb to report on family and child development research. Fatherhood is a strong theme on the Blog. He also reports on research on fathers and maternal & newborn health: 300 research reports on FamilyIncluded.com since 2015. In UK he co-founded the Fatherhood Institute and helped lead the fatherhood debate in UK. He received an OBE from the Queen in 2008 “for services to children”. Now he is working internationally to challenge the lack of attention to fatherhood in health, child, gender and economic programmes.

Dr. Minxuan He is an affiliate at the University of Maryland, College of Education. Broadly, her research investigates the role of motor activity in psychological processes including a broad range of psychological development from perception to attention, from cognition/speech to socioemotional changes in diverse populations and cultural settings. A main objective of her research, in collaboration with Dr. Natasha Cabrera and the lab, is to understand how experiential factors, such as adverse family and socioeconomic situations, ethnic minorities, would mediate children's developmental outcomes. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. She was a recipient of the University of Maryland President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. Currently she is an assistant professor of psychology at the Mount St. Mary's University

Yu (Tina) Chen is an alumnus of the Family Involvement Lab. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Economics from Grinnell College and her PhD in Human Development from the University of Maryland. Before coming to UMD, Tina worked as a lab manager with Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek at Temple University. Her research focuses on how parent-child interactions and home environment shape child outcomes. She is particularly interested in mothers and fathers from at-risk families and their input to and ways of interacting with their children.

Daniela Aldoney is an alumnus of the Family Involvement Lab. She earned her undergraduate degree in psychology from the Universidad de Chile and received her Master of Arts degree and PhD in Human Development from the University of Maryland. Currently, she is a research faculty at the Centro de Apego y Regulación Emocional (CARE) at the Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago, Chile. Her research interests include the study of parent-child relationships in disadvantaged populations during the preschool years. She has focused in understanding the development of emotional competences, executive functions, and language in children at risk and how mothers and father can promote an optimal development in their children. She teaches courses for psychlogy undergraduate and doctoral students and directs the Familia, Adolescencia e Infancia lab.

Liz Karberg is an alumnus of the Family Involvement Lab. She received her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from The College of William and Mary, her Master of Arts in Comparitive Human Development from the University of Chicago, and her PhD in Human Development from the University of Maryland. Dr. Karberg is a Senior Research Scientist at Child Trends. She studies parent-child relationships in fragile families (families in which the parents are not married), and how parent involvement affects early development in these families.

Catherine Kuhns is an alumnus of the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology at the University of Maryland, where she also completed a Certificate in Population Studies from the Maryland Population Research Center. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Human Development and Family Studies from Pennsylvania State University and her Masters of Science in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from Fordham University. Dr. Kuhns is a research associate in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population at the Urban Institute. Her research focuses on child welfare and public programs that support the well-being of low-income children and families. She is also interested in using research to inform policy at the local, state, and federal level to enhance child well-being. Catherine is currently a Doris Duke Fellow.

Jenessa Malin is an alumnus of the Family Involvement Lab. She is a Senior Social Science Research Analyst in the Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE). Her portfolio includes research and evaluation projects related to child welfare and early care and education programs (Head Start and CCDF). Dr. Malin began her work at OPRE as a Society for Research in Child Development Executive Branch Policy Fellow. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from Duke University. She also holds an M.A. in Measurement, Statistics, and Evaluation and a Ph.D. in Human Development, both from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Avery Hennigar is an alumnus of the Family Involvement Lab as of 2021. Dr. Hennigar received her PhD in human development from the University of Maryland, where she also completed graduate certificates in Measurement, Statistics, and Evaluation, and Population Studies. She received her Bachelor of Science in Public Health, Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, and Master of Public Health from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Currently, Dr. Hennigar is a Researcher in the Children, Youth, and Families division at Mathematica. Avery's program of research focuses on parenting and parent-child relationships in early childhood, with a particular emphasis on the role of fathers and father-child relationships to investigate the unique effects fathers have on a range of children’s developmental outcomes. Her work emphasizes the role of these family processes and family relationships on children in the context of poverty and within and across ethnic minority populations.

Kelsey McKee is an alumnus of the Family Involvement Lab as of 2021. Dr. McKee received her PhD in human development from the University of Maryland, where she also completed graduate certificates in Measurement, Statistics, and Evaluation, and Population Studies. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Arizona State University. Her past experience includes conducting in-home intervention programs with the Arizona child welfare system. Her interests lie in how parenting interventions can promote positive parent-child relationships and help parents to support children’s  early social and emotional development, particularly low-income communities.