Email: theo.waters@nyu.edu

Curriculum Vitae: theo.waters.CV

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Dr. Waters is an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University Abu Dhabi and a Global Network Associate Professor of Psychology in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. He received his PhD from Emory University in 2013. His research focuses on the development, organization, and impact of attachment representations and representations of self/identity across the lifespan.

Email: vsv9970@nyu.edu

Curriculum Vitae: stefania-vacaru-cv-2024

University Teaching Portfolio: BKO portfolio_Vacaru

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Stefania earned her doctorate degree in Developmental and Experimental Psychology at the Donders Institute in The Netherlands. Over the past years, Stefania has investigated the role of early attachment relationships for socioemotional and cognitive development. Her interdisciplinary approach has been marked by the integration of diverse psychological and biological metrics, encompassing both clinical and normative study populations. Her primary objective has been to discern the extent to which the prenatal and postnatal early-life caregiving environment contributes to variations in child development, both optimal and suboptimal. In the forthcoming years, Stefania is looking forward to examining the role of secure attachment scripts for psychophysiological stress regulation. In her free time, Stefania dives, plays tennis and dances salsa.

Muqing obtained her Ph.D. from the department of Human Development & Family Science from Purdue University in the US. Her research centers on the intersection of language and mental representations within an attachment framework; specifically, she examines how caregiver-child interactions, in particular, linguistic exchanges shape, update, and reflect internal working models of attachment (i.e., the secure base script), and how these representations influence socio-emotional adjustment across developmental stages and cultural contexts.

Her work can be summarized across these key areas: social-emotional representation learning and language acquisition; contextual factors associated with social-emotional representation learning process; cross-cultural similarities and differences in attachment representation and social-emotional adjustment. Moreover, in order to capture the subtleties of language-encoded mental representations and naturalistic social communication, she is trying to employ AI (LLM), natural language processing (NLP), and text mining to support the collection and analysis of ecologically valid, large-scale narrative and conversational data. 

Email: sb10429@nyu.edu

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Sophie Barriault holds a BA in Psychology from the University of Ottawa and an MA in Psychology from the Université de Moncton in Canada. Her professional experience includes coordinating a lab that investigates the effects of adversity and intervention in early childhood, where she gained proficiency in assessing maternal sensitivity. Sophie is passionate about research and dedicated to contributing to meaningful work in developmental psychology. Outside of work, she enjoys working out, spending time at the beach, and exploring new restaurants.

Caleb is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with minors in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Studies and History at New York University Abu Dhabi. His capstone project examines the interaction of attachment and ADHD-related characteristics in relation to internalizing symptoms. Following graduation, Caleb hopes to pursue a graduate program in School or Clinical Psychology, with a focus on how attachment contributes to the development of psychopathology and informs effective interventions.

Ritz is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a minor in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Studies at New York University Abu Dhabi. Her capstone project examines how early childhood attachment influences the perception of social situations. She is mainly interested in developmental psychology and the impact of adverse childhood experiences. Ritz hopes to continue building on these interests beyond graduation.

Sabrina is pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Psychology with a specialization in Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Her capstone project aims to explore the relationship between attachment security and depressive symptomatology, looking at whether emotional regulation capacities (assessed physiologically) play a role in this relationship. After graduation, she intends to study developmental neurodivergence more in depth by pursuing graduate studies in clinical neuroscience.