Before and alongside UX, I've spent years in developmental science labs at Columbia and UCLA, researching how adversity, families, schools, and early experiences shape how children grow, learn, and thrive. That work is building toward a clinical research direction: how trauma and chronic stress affect developing neurocognitive and socioemotional systems, and which interventions strengthen them. It's also the lens I bring to designing technology for kids and families.
How do early environments, relationships, and interventions shape children's brain and behavioral development, and when do those pathways become mental-health risk, or resilience?
Research interests
My research centers on how early environments, relationships, and interventions shape children's cognitive, emotional, and brain development. I am particularly interested in how adversity, poverty, school climate, family relationships, and early experiences influence emotion regulation, executive functioning, resilience, and vulnerability to mental-health difficulties across childhood and adolescence.
Across my research experiences, I have contributed to work spanning educational equity, school diversity, poverty reduction, early childhood development, parent–child interaction, brain development, and intervention science. Together, these experiences have shaped my growing clinical research interest in understanding how trauma and chronic stress affect developing neurocognitive and socioemotional systems and how developmentally responsive, trauma-informed interventions can strengthen executive functioning, emotion regulation, mental health, and long-term wellbeing.
My long-term goal is to become a child psychologist who integrates research, therapy, and education to support children and families, particularly those affected by adversity. I hope to study and develop interventions that translate knowledge about development and the brain into practical, accessible approaches for improving children's everyday functioning and psychological wellbeing.
Research experience
Listed most recent first, from infant brain development and family systems, to intervention science, to school climate and adolescent wellbeing.
Neurocognition, Early Experience & Development Lab · Director: Dr. Kimberly Noble
The NEED Lab investigates how early life experiences and adversity influence children's brain development, cognition, language, memory, and self-regulation, with a mission to inform educational, health, and policy interventions that support children facing adversity. I supported the lab's core operations and contributed to two of its studies: Baby's First Years and the BUDDY Study.
My responsibilities
Topics
What it gave me: a deeper understanding of developmental neuroscience, early adversity, and the relationship between socioeconomic experience and child development.
Studies within the NEED Lab
The first randomized controlled trial designed to examine whether poverty reduction directly influences infant brain development and early childhood outcomes, studying how increased financial resources impact cognitive, social-emotional, and neurological development in the earliest years.
My responsibilities
Coding domains
Building Understanding of Developmental Differences Across Years, follows children through the first three years of life to understand how socioeconomic experiences influence brain development, language, memory, stress physiology, and parent–child communication, investigating both risk and protective factors.
My responsibilities
Topics
Intervention Research
Dr. Watts' research examines the long-term impacts of educational and developmental interventions on children's life outcomes, whether programs can meaningfully alter developmental trajectories and create lasting improvements.
My responsibilities
Topics
Acknowledged contribution
Watts, T. W., Hart, E. R., & Bailey, D. H. (2024). How General is Educational Intervention Fadeout? A Meta-Analysis of Educational RCTs with Follow-Up. Teachers College, Columbia University / Boston College / UC Irvine.
What it gave me: a growing interest in prevention science, intervention effectiveness, and how programs can create lasting developmental change.
Research Assistant · PIs: Dr. Sandra Graham & Dr. Jaana Juvonen
Supported research on how racial and ethnic diversity within schools shapes students' social, emotional, and academic experiences. The project found that students in more ethnically diverse schools reported feeling safer, less lonely, less bullied, and more connected to peers across backgrounds (Graham, Munniksma & Juvonen, PubMed).
My responsibilities
Topics
What it gave me: hands-on experience conducting educational research in real school environments, and a lasting interest in educational equity, belonging, and adolescent development.
Scholarly work
Capstone Literature Review · 2022
Elam, P. (2022). M.A. in Developmental Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University.
A review examining the effectiveness of trauma-informed interventions in early childhood education, with particular attention to multicultural competency, educator preparedness, and the gap between intervention promise and sustained implementation in under-resourced schools serving students of color.
Argues that failure to sustain evidence-based trauma-informed programs in low-income schools represents a missed opportunity to reduce developmental and academic disparities, and calls on researchers, educators, and policymakers to prioritize cohesive outcome metrics and long-term investment in this space.
Abstract
Research on the effects of trauma in early childhood has heightened in the last decade. Studies reveal that early adverse experiences are associated with developmental delays in behavior, regulation, and achievement. Schools have begun to mitigate these realities through trauma-informed programs, which focus on training teachers and staff on how to identify and address the effects of trauma in the classroom. However, studies reveal that many interventions lack substantial measures and outcomes, and teachers continually feel ill-prepared to service students. Research also reveals that trauma disproportionately impacts students of color. However, very few studies address the role race plays in trauma-informed programs and how implicit bias can disrupt the relationship between teachers and students, resulting in negative effects. This review aims to examine the current literature on trauma-informed programs' effectiveness and provide a framework that incorporates cultural humility and tools to reduce implicit bias to ensure teachers are equipped to service traumatized students from multicultural backgrounds.
Full capstone available upon request.
Research skills
Emerging research agenda
I want to understand how adversity shapes children's cognitive, emotional, and neurological development, and how interventions can promote resilience and healthy outcomes. I'm pursuing a PhD on the path to becoming a clinical child psychologist studying trauma, emotion regulation, executive functioning, and developmental neuroscience.
Everything I've done, coding parent–child interactions in the Noble lab, facilitating usability sessions with kids, running programs for first-generation students, sitting in a kindergarten classroom watching a five-year-old work through something hard, has been asking the same question from a different angle. How does adversity get inside a child? And what actually helps?
I'm returning to research to answer that question with more rigor and more reach. I'm applying to Clinical Psychology PhD programs for Fall 2027, focused on early adversity, brain development, emotional regulation, and intervention science, with the long-term goal of conducting research, providing clinical care, and developing programs that serve children and families who've historically been underserved by both science and systems.