News

Achievements

May 2025

• Jada’s research on attacks diversity scholarship was accepted for presentation at the 2025 SPSSI conference in Portland, OR! Jada was also recently inducted into the Honos Civicus Society in recognition of her civic engagement and experiences!
• Undergrad RA, Natasha Yu, has accepted an offer to pursue graduate school in Developmental Psychology at Columbia! Natasha has been an RA in the lab since Fall 2024.
• Congratulations to all our graduating seniors! We are honored that you chose to spend some of your time at Tufts with us in the SISL. We look forward to hearing about the good things you do in the future for your communities and your fields!

April 2025

• Congratulations to Dr. Jada Copeland-Hayes for a successful defense and an overall impressive graduate school career! The title of Jada’s doctoral thesis is, Exploring the me-searcher stereotype to illuminate the multifaceted impact of epistemic exclusion: Faculty perceptions, graduate experiences, and undergraduate student evaluations. Jada was also recently awarded a 2025 Presidential Award for Civic Life from Tisch College! The Presidential Award is the highest recognition for service, leadership, and civic engagement conferred by Tufts University.
• Isha was awarded a 2025 Deborah Greenwald Fellowship from the Graduate Education Committee in the Department of Psychology! The fellowship will support Isha as she continues to work on her research this summer. Isha also recently received a grant from the Graduate Student Research Competition to fund her proposed MS research, titled: Investigating skin tone biases: Gendered perceptions of East and South Asians!
• Jailekha was awarded a Deborah Greenwald Fellowship from the Graduate Education Committee in the Department of Psychology! The fellowship will support Jailekha as she continues to work on her research this summer. In addition, Jailekha received a grant from the Tisch College Community Relations Center to fund her research on Understanding Mind Perception. Lastly, Jailekha’s projects on undergraduates’ perceptions of research methods and diversifying mind perception were accepted for presentation at the 2025 SPSSI conference in Portland, OR!

March 2025

• Lab alum, Uyen Chu, accepted an offer to attend graduate school in the fall! Uyen will be joining the University of Michigan, where she’ll pursue a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology. In addition to her acceptance, Uyen received a full-tuition scholarship and a departmental research award! Uyen was a member of the SISL from 2019-2022.
• Isha was accepted to attend the prestigious Summer Institute in Social and Personality Psychology (SISPP)! Held biannually, SISPP offers a two-week intensive summer experience for up to 100 pre-doctoral grad students in social and personality psychology. This summer, the institute will be held at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. While at SISPP, Isha will complete coursework on Culture and Social-Personality Processes: Concepts, Methods and Implications. Congrats, Isha!

November 2024

• Jailekha won second place in the Graduate Student Council's 3MT competition! Scroll down to find out about the competition. Congrats, Jailekha!

October 2024

• Congrats to Jada, Isha, and Jailekha for their successful submissions to the 2025 Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Conference in Denver, CO, Feb 20-22. SPSP is a prestigious international society for social and personality psychologists, and our lab will be making its mark at next year’s convention!
• Jada (along with Keturah, another SIS Lab affiliate, as well as Drs. Mikaela Spruill and Phia Salter) is co-organizing the first-ever “Critical Perspectives in Psychology” pre-conference at SPSP. This pre-conference will showcase psychological research taking critical perspectives in evaluating and branching away from mainstream norms and practices within the discipline. Jada will also be giving a talk at the pre-conference! Congrats, Jada!
• Isha (along with Mohammad Wiswall, grad student at Duke) is co-organizing and speaking in a symposium session titled “Disaggregating Gendered Perceptions of the Pan-Asian Diaspora: An Intersectional Approach”! Isha was also awarded a Diversity Travel Award to attend the conference. Congrats, Isha!
• Jailekha is presenting a poster titled “Diversifying Mind Perception: Black Americans’ Perceptions of Mind Differ by Character Race and Gender”! Jailekha was also awarded a Graduate Travel Award to attend the conference. Congrats, Jailekha!

September 2024

• Congrats to Jailekha, who successfully defended her Master’s thesis, Diversifying mind perception: Black Americans’ perceptions of mind differ by character race and gender. This is an important set of studies that will contribute to a more nuanced and intersectional understanding of moral psychology and mind perception!

April 2024

• Congrats to Katherine Barrasso! 
  April 25, 2024 
  Congrats to SISL alum, Katherine Barrasso, who has officially committed to the PsyD program at Loyola University Maryland! Way to go, Katherine! 
   
• Congrats to Jada Copeland-Hayes and Isha Smith-Ramakrishnan! 
  April 25, 2024 
  Congrats to Isha and Jada, who were both awarded funding from the Tufts Graduate Student Research Competition! The funds will support participant recruitment for their MA and Dissertation research, respectively. Isha’s project is called: “Gendering Race, or Gendering Phenotype? Effects of Target Ethnic Group on Feature-based Social Processing” and Jada’s project is called: “Who is Considered a Mesearcher? Racial Privilege in Positionality.” Congrats! 
   
• Congrats to Jungmin Lee! 
  April 25, 2024 
  Congrats Jungmin, who successfully defended her senior honors thesis on Friday! Jungmin did an excellent job and received high honors for her project. Way to go! 
   
• Congrats to Maria Garay! 
  April 18, 2024 
  A little over an hour ago, Maria successfully defended her dissertation and became an official PhD/doctor!! Dr. Garay, the whole lab is so proud of the work you’ve done and the contributions you’ve made to the field, both in terms of research and mentorship. This is culmination of all of your hard work in grad school, and it has paid off! Celebrate and enjoy this next phase - you’ve earned it! 
   
• Congrats to Jada Copeland-Hayes!   
  April 18, 2024   
  And a little over 24 hours ago, Jada successfully defended her Master’s thesis! Jada, you keep inspiring us with your dedication to understanding intersectionality and stigma in higher ed. We know your work is going to change how academia engages with DEI!   
   
• Congrats to Jungmin Lee!   
  April 18, 2024   
  Congrats as well to Jungmin, who was recently awarded the Best Poster Award in the Social Sciences at the Stanford Undergraduate Research Conference! Jungmin’s poster was based on her Summer Scholars and Honors Thesis research on women of color and perceptions of diversity messages on social media!

• Congrats to Ben Keller!   
  April 11, 2024   
  Congrats to SISL alum, Ben Keller, who recently accepted an offer to join the Management & Organizations group at UCLA Anderson School of Management to pursue his PhD! Ben was an undergraduate RA in our lab from 2018-2020, and completed his honors thesis in the midst of the pandemic lockdown!

  In this application season, Ben received an impressive 6 acceptances (!!) to management PhD programs. He ultimately decided that UCLA was the best fit, and he plans to work with Joyce He, Jennifer Whitson, Miguel Unzueta and Margaret Shih. He hopes to bridge social psychology and the management literature on identity management and intersectional stereotyping.

  Congrats – we can’t wait to see what you do next!

March 2024

• Congrats to Jada Copeland-Hayes!   
  March 26, 2024   
  Congrats to Jada on being awarded the 2024 GSAS Robert P. Guertin Graduate Student Leadership Award! From the AS&E website: “This award recognizes outstanding graduate student leadership in the arts, humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, or engineering. Evidence of nominees' leadership may include accomplishments in such areas as academic or social programming, curricular initiatives, supporting the work and lives of fellow students, community service, and/or developing improved policies.” This is amazing news, Jada, and we cannot think of someone more deserving of this award! In recognition of her achievements, Jada will be honored at the Graduate Awards Ceremony on Friday, April 26, 2024 at 3:45 pm (Distler Performance Hall, Granoff Music Center, 20 Talbot Road). If you would like to join us in celebrating Jada, RSVP here by April 14^th.

  Jada, we see your hard work and how it’s paying off! You lift us all up. Congrats again!

• Congrats to Isha Smith-Ramakrishnan!   
  March 26, 2024   
  Congrats to Isha on being awarded a 2024 Deborah Greenwald Summer Fellowship from the Department of Psychology! Isha was awarded this fellowship in recognition of her academic achievement and the merit and impact of her graduate research program. This fellowship will support Isha to continue her research on phenotypicality and gendered race perceptions over the summer!

  Isha, we see your hard work and how it’s paying off! You lift us all up. Congrats again!

• Congrats to Jungmin Lee!   
  March 26, 2024   
  Congrats to Jungmin for being accepted to the PhD program in Business: Organization and Management at Emory University!! Before beginning her PhD journey at Emory, Jungmin will also be presenting her thesis research at two conferences this summer: the Stanford Research Conference and 2) National Undergraduate Research Conference. Jungmin is also hoping to present at the Tufts Community Symposium next month! Jungmin, we are very proud of your hard work so far and your dedication to understanding the experiences of women of color in STEM. We can’t wait to see all of the great things you will do in grad school!

  Jungmin, we see your hard work and how it’s paying off! You lift us all up. Congrats again!

More News

• Dr. Remedios discusses stigma on NPR's the Academic Minute.
• The Toronto Sun (September 2, 2011). Sexuality affects impressions of others.
• UPI.com (July 13, 2011). Minority women: Racism harder than sexism.
• Global News (July 12, 2011). Racism stings Asian women worse than sexism.
• The Montreal Gazette (July 12, 2011). Racism stings Asian women worse than sexism.
• The Vancouver Sun (July 12, 2011). Racism bothers Asian women worse than sexism.