My Journey

As an undergraduate in psychology, I was always toying with the idea of going into Clinical Psychology, like many psychology students in university. But that dream always felt so out of reach.

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I had the amazing opportunity to start my foray into research in my sophomore year of college at the Singapore Management University. My earliest mentors, Dr. Amy Lim, Dr. Chi-Ying Cheng and Dr. Andree Hartanto nurtured a strong research foundation of which allowed me to flourish as a young undergraduate researcher and ignite my interest in affective science.

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After graduating, I was interested to expand my research areas to include a clinical population. I joined the Department of Psychiatry at Tan Tock Seng Hospital as a research coordinator examining mood disorders in stroke under the supervision of Dr. Lai Gwen Chan. It was an eye opening experience, interacting with patients and doing research in a clinical setting.

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My prior fascination with affective sciences and interest in psychopathology led me to consider exploring these two areas together. However, these areas were outside of my current institution's research scope. I seized the opportunity to conduct research as an independent researcher under the supervision of Dr. Nur Hani Zainal at Harvard Medical School and Dr. Michelle Gayle Newman at Pennsylvania State University. There, I led a project examining how parental abuse / low parental affection predicts poorer future likelihood to engage in positive reappraisal decades after childhood, which significantly predicted GAD severity in adulthood.

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As of fall 2024, I will be embarking on my PhD in Psychology (Clinical Science) at the Washington University in St. Louis under the supervision of Dr. Renee Thompson, examining affective dynamics in psychopathology.