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Paola Montufar Soria

PhD in Developmental Psychology Student

Email: pm3282@nyu.edu

Program: PhD in Developmental Psychology

Year Entered Program: 2021

Research Interests: Latine children's early learning experiences; Latine families' learning practices; Early math development; Family math; Emic, culturally grounded, and strengths based approaches to young children's STEM learning; Bilingualism; Early childhood

Principal Advisor(s): Dr. Gigliana Melzi

Research Description/Bio: 

Paola Montúfar is a doctoral student in the Developmental Psychology Program at NYU Steinhardt under the mentorship of Dr. Gigliana Melzi in the Culture, Families, and Early Development (CFD) Lab. Broadly, she is interested in bilingual Latine children’s and families’ early STEM experiences. She is particularly interested in the family practices as well as individual cognitive processes that support early math learning for bilingual Latine children. Ultimately she hopes to aim this work toward identifying culturally grounded tools that can be leveraged to support early STEM learning.

Paola holds a BA in Psychology with Honors from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). While at UTSA, she worked in Dr. Nicole Wicha’s lab, examining the neuro-cognitive basis of how Spanish-English bilinguals process multiplication facts with electroencephalography (EEG). In addition, she worked with Dr. Guadalupe Carmona and Stanford PhD candidate Rosa Chavez examining teacher sensemaking of testing policies and its impact on classroom decision-making. During her time at UTSA, Paola was also a Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (RISE)-2 fellow, a research training program for underrepresented students in science.

Curriculum vitae