Email: khl393@nyu.edu
Program: PhD in Developmental Psychology
Year entered Program: 2022
Research Interests: early childhood, language, parent-child interactions
Principal Advisor(s): Dr. Catherine Tamis-LeMonda
Research Description/Bio: Kristy Lai (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in the Developmental Psychology program at NYU Steinhardt's Applied Psychology Department. Kristy's work aims to explore the mechanisms of children’s early language development in the context of everyday caregiver-child interactions, especially among linguistically diverse families. She is particularly interested in fostering local and global research-practice-partnerships in developing culturally sensitive methodologies to understand and support the dynamic processes involved in children’s early learning and development.
Kristy received her B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Education and Early Development and Learning Sciences from UC Berkeley. Prior to attending NYU, she worked as a researcher at WestEd, an education non-profit, where she supported several local and state projects in California on improving programs and policies for children, youth, and their families. At NYU, she has worked on various NSF-funded projects, the PLAY (https://play-project.org), the Global BABIES project (https://global-babies.org), projects in collaboration with NYU Langone's Together Growing Strong program, and with the Center for the Study of Asian American Health (e.g., on the "OurChild" app). Kristy is an IES-PIRT fellow, a Carter Family scholar recipient, a C.V. Starr A/P/A scholar, and a Marvin Greenberg fellow.