Email: aashna.poddar@nyu.edu

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Aashna graduated from Singapore Management University with a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Psychology and from the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a Master’s degree in Human Development and Psychology. She is interested in understanding how gender stereotypes and status differences affect the development of children’s academic and career interests. She is also interested in cultural socialization and intersectionality. Outside of the lab, Aashna enjoys reading, experimenting with cooking, and running.

PhD, University of Texas at Austin

Email: nw2545@nyu.edu

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Nate completed his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. He is interested in educational beliefs and gender-related stereotypes, at the individual and contextual levels, that impact motivation and persistence. He is particularly interested in how these dynamics may shift across gender and sexual orientation identities.

Email: ay2394@nyu.edu

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Anastasiia graduated from NYU Abu Dhabi in 2026 with a B.A. in Psychology. During her time there, she worked with Dr. Andrea Vial and completed an undergraduate thesis examining the factors that shape women’s preferences for benevolently sexist versus egalitarian romantic partners. After graduation, she completed a research fellowship with Dr. Jaime Napier, investigating women’s experiences with hostile and patronizing treatment across 14 countries. Anastasiia first joined CDL as a research assistant in 2024, where she led a project examining children’s and adults’ leadership motivation before becoming the lab manager. Her research interests focus on understanding how children and adults develop and navigate gendered beliefs and attitudes, and how these processes shape cognition and sustain broader gender hierarchies.

Email: duygu.yilmaz@nyu.edu

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Duygu received her B.A. in Psychology and M.A. in Developmental Psychology from Bogazici University, Istanbul. She is interested in children’s reasoning about society’s structural functioning. In particular, she is curious about how and when children come to understand and explain complex social structures and social roles as the causal forces shaping human lives. She is also interested in how structural reasoning processes influence children’s attitudes toward societal issues. Outside the lab, she enjoys wandering around, running, and watching period dramas.