Yale Developmental Labs

Nicolò Cesana-Arlotti
Assistant professor of Psychology, Yale University

Dr. Cesana-Arlotti earned his Ph.D. from the Center for Brain and Cognition at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. Cesana-Arlotti studies how infants and children become able to think and talk as we do. His research focuses on the primitive logical resources that support infants striking learning capacities, and how maturation, experience, and the acquisition of language contribute to the flourishing of thinking and reasoning. To learn more about Dr. Cesana-Arlotti's work, please visit https://www.infantcognition.yale.edu/.

Yarrow Dunham
Associate professor of Psychology, Yale University

Dr. Dunham is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale. He studied developmental psychology at Harvard University and previously taught at Princeton and UC Merced. He wants to understand how children come to understand the richness and complexity of the social world, and is fascinated by all the funny things kids say! He is the happy father of a New Haven elementary school kid and the caretaker of a very fuzzy kitty. To learn more about Dr. Dunham's work, please visit https://www.socialcogdev.com/.

Julian Jara-Ettinger
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Yale University

Dr. Jara-Ettinger grew up in a small city called Morelia in central Mexico. He has a PhD in cognitive science from MIT, and joined Yale Developmental Labs in 2017. Outside of his work studying children, he enjoys cooking, reading, and community engagement. To learn more about Dr. Jara-Ettinger's work, please visit https://compdevlab.yale.edu/.

Frank Keil
Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dilley Professor of Psychology, Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Yale University

Dr. Keil is Professor of Psychology, Cognitive Science and Linguistics at Yale. He is interested in how humans of all ages construct coarse causal gists and intuitive theories of complex real world phenomena. He has been exploring this topic in various ways for over four decades and is grateful to his children and grandchildren for having given him a constant stream of ideas about cognitive development. To learn more about Dr. Keil's work, please visit https://cogdevlab.yale.edu/.

Julia Leonard
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Yale University

Dr. Leonard has a PhD in Cognitive Science from MIT and joined Yale Developmental Labs in 2021. Dr. Leonard is interested in understanding young children's motivation so that we can build environments that help children persist through the many challenges we all face in life. Studying children inspires Julia to try new hobbies and find joy in being a novice. To learn more about Dr. Leonard's work, please visit https://www.learninglab.yale.edu/.

Katya Mehta
Recruitment Coordinator and Community Liaison

Katya Mehta is the recruitment coordinator for the Yale Developmental Labs. Born in New Haven, Katya received her B.A. in Theater and Spanish from Oberlin College, and her master's in Cognitive Science and Language at the University of Barcelona and the Center for Brain and Cognition at Pompeu Fabra University. Prior to joining the Yale Developmental Labs, Katya was a research scientist at Columbia's Developing Language and Literacy Lab, a librarian and community outreach associate with the New York Public Library, and a classically trained theater actress. Katya used to have many interests, but now her free time is spent chasing her beautiful, curious, and rambunctious toddler.

Mahham Fayyaz
Lab Manager, Infant Mind and Cognition Lab

Mahham Fayyaz is the lab manager for the Infant Mind and Cognition Lab. Mahham received her BA in Psychology from Sarah Lawrence College. There she worked on her thesis with Dr. Kim Ferguson examining the impact of diversity on facial processing in infants. She has previously worked as a coordinator at Columbia University’s Center for Theoretical Neuroscience and as a case manager at the Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers. In her spare time, she enjoys painting and long naps.

Surya Marimuthu
Lab Manager, Leonard Learning Lab

Surya Marimuthu is the lab manager of the Leonard Learning Lab. He received a B.S. in Cognitive Science and a B.A. in Psychology from UC Santa Cruz. Prior to joining the lab, he worked as a research assistant and completed his senior thesis under Dr. Maureen Callanan at UC Santa Cruz and was a summer research assistant in Dr. Hyowon Gweon’s Social Learning Lab at Stanford. His thesis examined how moral essentialist beliefs are communicated in parent-child conversations. Surya is broadly interested in how children learn, reason, and develop biases about social groups. Ultimately, he hopes to understand the cognitive origins of how and why we develop social biases — to be better equipped on how to tackle them.

Alina Dau
Lab Manager, Social Cognitive Development Lab and Computational Social Cognition Lab

Alina Dau is the joint lab manager for the Social Cognitive Development Lab and the Computational Social Cognition Lab. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from Bowdoin College and proudly hails from Louisiana. Alina’s research interests center on procedural fairness and children's development of a moral self-concept. Outside the lab, she enjoys crafting and pickleball.