Lab Members
EMOTION, HEALTH, AND PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY LAB AT YALE UNIVERSITY
Wendy Berry Mendes
Lab Director
Dr. Mendes is the Charles and Dorathea Dilley Professor at Yale University. Her research questions sit at the intersection of social, personality, and biological psychology and primarily concerns questions regarding embodiment: how emotions, thoughts, and intentions are experienced in the body and how bodily responses shape and influence thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. Some current research areas include coping with stigma and discrimination, dyadic intergroup interactions, affect contagion, mind-body relations across the life course, effects of stress on decision-making, and stress management interventions.
Yoobin Park
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Yoobin Park is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, working with the Network for Emotional Well-being team. Before coming to UCSF, she completed her PhD in Psychology at the University of Toronto. Her research has focused on well-being as a partnered individual (e.g., examining factors contributing to a high-quality romantic relationship) and as a single individual (e.g., examining factors contributing to a fulfilling single life). She is broadly interested in understanding processes surrounding changes in well-being and their consequences. You can learn more about her work at https://yoobinpark.weebly.com/
Yoobin’s CV: Google Docs
Kimberly J. Martin
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Kimberly J. Martin is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She was previously a UC President’s Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. She earned her Ph.D. in Social Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She graduated with honors and high distinction from the University of California, Berkeley, with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Dance and Performance Studies. Her research investigates the impact of injustice and the importance of history to the experiences, perceptions, and health of members of minoritized groups, particularly in the healthcare system. Additionally, her research aims to increase the recognition of and action toward dismantling systemic and individual injustice. You can learn more about her work at drkimjmartin.com.
Kim’s CV: Google Docs
Maria Monroy
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Maria Monroy is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She was previously a Ford Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. She completed her Ph.D. in Social/Personality Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She also received her B.A. from UC Berkeley as the top undergraduate in psychology— with highest honors in psychology and high distinction in general scholarship. Maria’s research covers multiple facets of emotion science, such as expression, experience, and culture. A large portion of her attention is devoted to investigating the beneficial effects of discrete positive emotions, such as awe, on stress, social connection, health, and well-being.
Maria’s CV: Google Docs
Val Wongsomboon
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Val Wongsomboon is a Susan Nolen-Hoeksema Postdoctoral Associate at Yale Psychology Department. She got her Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on sexual health and well-being, sexual well-being disparities, and close relationships among historically marginalized and stigmatized populations as well as those underrepresented in sex and relationship research, such as LGBTQ+ and single (unpartnered) individuals. You can learn more about her work at https://valwongsomboon.weebly.com/.
Jieni Zhou
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Jieni Zhou is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She earned her Ph.D. in Social Psychology with a concentration in Quantitative Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also holds a master’s degree in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University and graduated with honors and high distinction from Bryn Mawr College with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Education. Her research focuses on the intersection of positive emotions and social relationships, with a particular emphasis on co-experienced positive emotion. Her work aims to understand how co-experienced positive emotion influences mental, physical, relational, and community well-being. Additionally, her research explores ways (e.g., high-quality listening) to nurture these communal emotional experiences.
Jieni’s CV: Google Docs
Mark S. Chen
POST-DOCTORAL FELLOW
Mark S. Chen is a Susan Nolen-Hoeksema Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. He received his B.Sc. in Psychology from Tsinghua University in 2017 and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University in 2024. Before joining the lab, he completed his clinical internship at Weill Cornell Medical College. His research centers on adversity, emotion regulation processes, and affective psychopathology across diverse contexts and development. In the EHP lab, he focuses on how adversity shapes physiological reactivity to emotional experiences and how to optimize emotion regulation success in the context of stigma and discrimination. You can learn more about his work here.
Gold Okafor
Post-doctoral fellow
Gold Okafor is Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She earned her PhD in Social and Personality Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. During this time, she was a Ford Predoctoral Fellow. Her work applies emotion research to investigate racial and gender disparities. In one line of research, she explores disparate judgments and interactions towards an emotional person as a function of their race, gender, and emotion. In another line of research, she examines the cultural validity of emotion regulation constructs among marginalized communities.
Paige Freeburg
Graduate Student
Paige Freeburg is in the Social/Personality Psychology Ph.D. program at Yale University. She graduated from Baylor University in 2022 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Dance. She then worked as the lab manager for the Laboratory on Social and Affective Neuroscience at Georgetown University. Paige's research interests include autonomic specificity, interoception, and affect contagion. Her research aims to further explore mind-body connections (i.e., the way our physiology shapes and is shaped by our emotions, social experiences, and health).
Paige’s CV: Google Docs
Sienna Bland-Abramson
GRADUATE STUDENT
Sienna Bland-Abramson is a graduate student in the Social Psychology area at Yale. She graduated with the highest distinction and college honors from the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.A. in Psychology. Before joining the EHP Lab, she worked with Dr. Naomi Eisenberger in the Social Affective Neuroscience Lab at UCLA. She is interested in examining the bidirectional biological and psychological mechanisms of stress, and aims to clarify how these mechanisms influence emotional well-being, social connection, and physical health.
Doris Chi
Doris is an MPH student in Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health. She graduated magna cum laude from Smith College in 2024 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Applied Statistics. Her research uses mixed methods to examine identity-based and stigma-related stressors among marginalized populations and how these stressors interact with social environments to drive health inequities.