TEAM

Shirley Wang, Ph.D.

Lab Director

Shirley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She received her B.A. from The College of New Jersey (2017), her Ph.D. from Harvard University (2024), and completed her predoctoral internship at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School (2024). Shirley’s research aims to develop and harness methods that can capture and model the immense complexity of psychopathology, including mathematical, computational, and intensive longitudinal methods. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and published in over 50 scientific papers and book chapters. Shirley’s research and mentorship has also been recognized through the receipt of several awards, and she was recently listed as one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Healthcare.

CV | Google Scholar | Twitter

Leily Behbehani

PhD Student

Leily received her B.S. in Psychology from Haverford College in 2021. Before joining the CCS lab as a graduate student, Leily worked as a clinical research coordinator in Dr. Sunny Tang's lab where she studied NLP predictors of suicide and severe psychopathology. Leily is interested in using data from real-time monitoring technologies to predict and model suicide and self-injurious behaviors, particularly in minority populations. 

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Sharina Hamm

PhD Student

Shari received her B.Sc. in Psychology from Leiden University in 2021 and will receive her Research M.Sc. from the same institute in 2024. Throughout her master’s, she worked at the Rutledge Lab at Yale where she investigated the computational dynamics of self-esteem in response to social feedback and comparison. She also worked as a postgraduate research assistant at Yale’s ABCD Lab where she wrote her master’s thesis on socio-emotional functioning and conduct behaviors in a network analysis approach with Dr. Arielle Baskin-Sommers and Dr. Eiko Fried. Overall, Shari is interested in elucidating the complex and dynamic processes that give rise to and reinforce self-injurious coping with negative affect by using novel computational approaches and EMA data.

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Frances Grace Hart

Lab Manager

Grace received her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Philosophy from Boston College in 2023. Before joining the CCS Lab as a lab manager, she completed an Honors Thesis on interpretation bias and death anxiety under the mentorship of Dr. Courtney Beard at McLean Hospital. She has also worked on projects related to death attitudes and suicide, and metascientific questions regarding measurement flexibility and auxilliary hypothesis testing. During her time with the CCS Lab, Grace is excited to expand her computational skills while gaining experience with EMA and theory formalization.

CV | Google Scholar | Twitter | Website

Ashvin (Ash) Trehan

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Ash is an undergraduate student at Yale pursuing a B.A. in Economics. Before joining the CCS Lab as an undergraduate research assistant, Ash worked as a summer research assistant at The Hamilton Lab at Rutgers University under Dr. Jessica Hamilton, and he also co-led the RISE Team, the lab’s youth advisory board. Ash is the CEO and co-founder of Myndful, an award-winning machine-learning chatbot that aims to make mental health resources more accessible to adolescents. Ash is interested in using technology to create solutions that address society’s most pressing issues. 

Anika Shethia

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Anika is a sophomore at Yale College, pursuing a B.S. in Neuroscience on the pre-med track. She is particularly interested in understanding the rising prevalence of mental health issues in intense academic settings, as well as considering how computational models can increase equity and inclusivity in the mental health landscape. Outside of this, Anika loves to volunteer at the Yale Community Kitchen or show around visitors as a Campus Tour Guide.

Collaborators

We’re lucky to do science with so many wonderful people!

Kathryn Fox, Ph.D., University of Denver

Annie Haynos, Ph.D., Virginia Commonwealth University

Matthew Nock, Ph.D., Harvard University

Jordan Smoller, M.D., Sc.D., Massachusetts General Hospital

Rebecca Fortgang, Ph.D., Massachusetts General Hospital

Kate Bentley, Ph.D., Massachusetts General Hospital

Alexander Millner, Ph.D., Harvard University

Donald Robinaugh, Ph.D., Northeastern University

Sabine Wilhelm, Ph.D., Massachusetts General Hospital

Jennifer Thomas, Ph.D., Massachusetts General Hospital

Kamryn Eddy, Ph.D., Massachusetts General Hospital

Eiko Fried, Ph.D., Leiden University

Yaniv Yacoby, Ph.D., Wellesley College

Alumni

The amazing people Shirley worked with at Harvard!

Thesis Students

Yuri-Grace Ohashi (2019 - 2021) | website

Sarah Lipson (2019 - 2020)

Sabrina Bell (2019 - 2020)

Melissa Dreier (2017 - 2019) | website

Research Assistants

Praise Adekola (2022 - 2023)

Julia Vitagliano (2022 - 2023)

Krandhasi Kodaiarasu (2022 - 2023)

Chiara Bertarelli (2022)

Imani Weeks (2020 - 2021)

Grace Krantz (2020)

Sunday Hull (2019 - 2020)

Lauren Harnedy (2019 - 2021)

Anne Lheem (2018)

Cristina Nardini (2018)

Claire Pinson (2017 - 2018)

Chase Venables (2017 - 2018)