People Type: Graduate Students

Shanthi Kuppa is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Educational Psychology. She received her B.S. in Cognitive Psychology and a minor in Cognitive Science from UC San Diego. She is interested in understanding children’s cognitive development to support them in becoming efficient and involved learners. More specifically, she is interested in how children acquire …

Silvia Liu is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Human Development area within the Department of Educational Psychology. She earned her B.S. in Early Childhood Education from Boston University and an Ed.M. in Learning Design from Harvard University. Her research interests center on how children learn about the world and develop conceptual understanding. She is also …

Samantha Macksey is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Human Development area of the Department of Educational Psychology. Samantha received her B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Mathematical Modeling of Complex Systems from Northeastern Illinois University in 2023. Her research interests involve examining how children’s understanding of science and math predicts their likelihood of entering …

Ashley Reece (Ezpeleta) is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Human Development area of the Department of Educational Psychology, being advised by Dr. Haley Vlach. She received her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Linguistics from Miami University (OH) and served as the lab manager for Dr. Edward Hubbard’s Educational Neuroscience Lab (here at UW–Madison). …

Yi Tong is a sixth-year Ph.D. student in the Human Development area in the Department of Educational Psychology. Yi received her B.S. in Human Development and Family Studies and Psychology from UW–Madison in the fall of 2019. Yi’s research interests primarily lie in the study of children’s language learning processes with a focus on educational applications. …

Ezgi Melisa Yüksel is a sixth-year Ph.D. student in the Cognitive Psychology area of the Psychology Department. Ezgi received her B.A. from Middle East Technical University in Psychology and her M.A. in Cognitive Psychology from Bilkent University. Her main interest is how we train learning and memory processes. She is also interested in whether we can …