PhD Students
Juno Yingzhi Dong
Ph.D. student in Education – Human Development & Psychology
M.A. in Humanities (Linguistics), University of Chicago, 2019
B.A. in Global Studies and French, Colby College, 2018
I am interested in translanguaging as a theory and practice in education. My research focuses on supporting young dual language learners (DLLs) in early childhood settings. Prior to coming to HDP, I worked as a research assistant and a Mandarin teacher.
Han Lee
Joint Doc Ph.D student in Special Education – Human Development & Psychology
M.S in Special Education – CSU East Bay
M.A in Educational Psychology – Pepperdine University
My research interests focus on addressing the disproportionate rates of English Learners in special education by examining the inaccuracy of current identification processes of the educational system. My own teaching experiences with culturally and linguistically diverse students with disabilities have been instrumental in shaping my hopes to support future special education teachers through fieldwork and research.
Yifei Wang (Phoebe)
Ph.D. student in Human Development and Psychology, School of Education and Information Studies, UCLA
M.S.Ed. in Learning Sciences and Technologies, University of Pennsylvania
B.Econ. in Finance & B.A. in English, Beijing Foreign Studies University
I am a Ph.D. student in Human Development and Psychology at UCLA. My research interests include sociolinguistics and Language Variation; bilingualism, bilectalism and multilingualism; language assessment; first and second language acquisition.
Edwin Zamora
Doctoral Student in Human Development and Psychology
B.A. Psychology, UCLA
My interest in the language and literacy outcomes of multilingual children stems from my experience as Sequential bilingual (Spanish) who went through ELD during my early schooling. As an undergraduate, I encountered the literature on the ‘bilingual advantage’ and immersed myself in research shortly after. I was propelled into the field as McNair Scholar and quickly became invested in generating studies with an asset-based perspective of heritage languages.
Xizi (Sue) Zhang
Ph.D. student in Human Development and Psychology, School of Education and Information Studies, UCLA
Ed.M. in Human Development and Psychology, Harvard University, 2020
M.A. in Learning Sciences, Northwestern University, 2018
B.A. in Elementary Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2017
I am primarily interested in the language and literacy development of bilingual and multilingual learners. My research interest in this area was piqued by my experience working with ESL students in Ann Arbor public schools and teaching EFL learners in China. I also have a background in academic language research, having worked as a research assistant at Harvard and Fudan University in China. There, I studied how adolescent EFL students write in English across communicative contexts.