Meet Our Team
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Selin Zeytinoglu, Ph.D.
She/her
I am an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Tulane University and a faculty member of Tulane’s Brain Institute. I also serve as a faculty affiliate at the University of Maryland. You can visit my Tulane faculty page here.
As a developmental scientist, I investigate how caregiver characteristics (e.g., personality, mental health) and children’s own characteristics (e.g., temperament) contribute to individual differences in socioemotional development across childhood and adolescence. In doing so, I particularly focus on how these characteristics contribute to parent–child dynamics during social interactions, and how these interactions, in turn, contribute to children’s social learning, self-regulation, and mental health outcomes. I also investigate how early caregiver and child factors contribute to children’s neural responses related to cognitive control, social information processing, and attention patterns during socially salient situations (stay tuned). My research integrates multiple methods, including behavioral observations, mobile eye-tracking, electrophysiological assessments (EEG/ERPs, EKG), and multi-reporter approaches. My research is primarily supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
I received my Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies (with a minor in educational research methods) from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, my M.S. in Clinical Community Counseling from Johns Hopkins University, and my B.A. in Early Childhood Education from Bogazici University. I also did postdoctoral research with Dr. Nathan Fox at the University of Maryland, which was supported by an F32 fellowship from NIMH.
When I'm not doing research, I play with my 2 fluffy cats, read, paint, bike, travel, go to concerts, and explore New Orleans!
-
Natasha Oberoi
She/her
Hi! My name is Natasha and I am a research assistant working on the mother-child dynamics study in the Child Development Lab. I am a M.S. in Data Science student at the University of Maryland. I recently graduated with a B.S. in neurobiology and physiology.
In the future, I hope to apply data science and machine learning techniques in the healthcare industry to drive innovation and improve patient outcomes.
In my free time, I enjoy reading, hiking, planning trips, and baking!
-
Avery Budlong
He/him
Hi I'm Avery, a junior research assistant studying Computer Science. I'm excited to expand my knowledge of computer vision techniques and apply them to help with the mother-child dynamics study. My role involves using machine learning to assist with processing collected videos.
In the future, I would love to pursue a master's degree in CS.
Outside of school, I enjoy go-kart racing, drawing, and I'm trying to improve my cooking skills.
-
Srinidhi Arumugam
She/her
Hi! My name is Srinidhi and I'm a junior double majoring in Physiology & Neurobiology and Computer Science. I am an undergraduate research assistant working on the Mother-Child Dynamics study.
I'm planning on pursuing bioinformatics or bioengineering in grad school, with a focus in machine learning.
In my free time, I enjoy painting, reading, and playing tennis!
-
Saksham Kapoor
He/him
Hi! My name is Saksham, and I'm an undergraduate research assistant working on the Mother-Child Dynamics study. My role involves developing pipelines to process the data collected during the study, performing sentiment analysis and exploring additional techniques within the domain of NLP to gain deeper insights from the observations.
In the future, I aim to leverage AI-driven solutions to address real-world challenges and push the boundaries of human knowledge and progress.
Outside of academics, I enjoy reading fiction books, going on long walks, and listening to music.
-
Anushka Agarwal
She/her
Hi! My name is Anushka Agarwal and I’m a rising sophomore majoring in Computer Science. I am an undergraduate research assistant working on the Mother-Child Dynamics study.
In the future, I hope to explore how extended reality and robotics can be applied in surgical settings to improve patient outcomes and support more personalized treatment solutions.
In my free time, I enjoy dancing, reading, hiking, and photography!