Bullying Prevention and Mental Health Promotion Lab

Dr. Cixin Wang

Diksha Bali

Diksha is a fifth-year in ËÄÉ«AV’s School Psychology PhD program. Although her nuclear family is North Indian, she grew up in South India, in an interfaith monastery, and the UAE. She moved to Philadelphia to study for undergraduate degrees in Business and Creative Writing, and then her MS.Ed. degree in Quantitative Methods and Human Development (counseling concentration), all at the ËÄÉ«AV of Pennsylvania. Her research breadth includes designing surveys to evaluate community programs; doing qualitative and quantitative work for community-based research projects; and analyzing large datasets such as the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) for policy decisions. While she has been doing school and community-based work since 2010, her current research and intervention interests include mitigating the links between inter- and intra-group conflict, mental health and social issues, via methods like community outreach, no-cost resource provision and facilitating intergroup dialogue. She strives to take a holistic, contextual and ecologically sensitive approach in her work, seeking to consistently grow and learn while centering others' needs. Her current grants and projects hopefully reflect this.

Finally, Diksha has been practicing meditation techniques, yoga asana, and Eastern philosophies, which are now used and studied as interventions in Psychology, since she was a toddler. She has facilitated conversations in the broader field of Psychology to help people talk more about the South and East Asian philosophies underlying many mindfulness-based practices popularized worldwide today. Being cognizant of the guiding philosophies, native practice indications and limitations of many mind-body techniques may help one increase one’s depth and breadth of study, practice and cross-cultural understanding, improving the holistic benefits one and others may receive. She wishes nothing but the best for everyone reading her profile here. She is happy to build partnerships with others around common interests and/or try to support other students in their graduate school journeys; please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn or via email whenever relevant. Please take good care.

Ja'Kala Barber

Ja'Kala is a third-year doctoral student in the School Psychology program at ËÄÉ«AV. She received her B.A. in Psychology from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2021. After completing undergrad, Ja'Kala worked as a full-time Research Assistant in The Gaab Lab at Harvard Graduate School of Education. While at the Gaab Lab, she worked on several longitudinal studies examining the typical and atypical learning trajectories of children, with a special focus on reading and language development. Her research interests center around motivation, well-being, learning disorders, and the impacts these factors have on students from minoritized backgrounds. 

Ami Patel

Ami Patel is a fifth-year doctoral student in the School Psychology program at ËÄÉ«AV. Ami received her B.S. in Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth ËÄÉ«AV (VCU) in 2015 and her Master’s in Counseling Psychology from Temple ËÄÉ«AV in 2017. Upon graduation, she worked as a Clinical Research Coordinator at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) on IES and NIMH-funded research grants focused on anxiety mental health interventions in schools as well as organizational skills training (OST) for those with executive functioning difficulties. Ami is interested in the cultural adaptation and cultural responsiveness of mental health interventions and social-emotional learning both in schools and in the community, particularly for Asian American students/families.

Romy Stancofski

Romy is excited to be a fourth-year doctoral student in the School Psychology program at ËÄÉ«AV. Romy received her B.A. in Psychology and Speech, Language, and Hearing Science from the George Washington ËÄÉ«AV in 2018. In 2020, she received her M.A. in Psychology from American ËÄÉ«AV, where she studied the relationships between mindfulness, body image, and self-worth. Following the completion of her M.A., she worked in a special education program as a paraeducator in a preschool classroom before starting at ËÄÉ«AV. Her research interests include youth mental health, social-emotional learning, and the school experiences of Arab American children and families.

John Seipp

John Seipp is a second-year doctoral student in the School Psychology program at ËÄÉ«AV. John received his B.A. in Psychology and Public Health at American ËÄÉ«AV in Washington, D.C. in 2021. Upon graduation, he worked as a research associate on an IES grant-funded project at Ohio ËÄÉ«AV focused on culturally responsive teaching practices and classroom behavior management. John is interested in school climate, youth mental health, and the experiences of Asian American students and families.

Xinyi Zhang

Xinyi Zhang is a fifth-year doctoral student in the School Psychology program at ËÄÉ«AV and on internship this year with PGCPS. She earned her Master of Education in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard Graduate School of Education. She received her undergraduate education from the ËÄÉ«AV of Hong Kong and Yale ËÄÉ«AV (as a visiting international student). Her research interests include cross-cultural parenting and youth mental health. She is currently working on a project looking at ethnic-racial socialization among Chinese Americans.   

Jessica Momanyi

Jess (she/her) is thrilled to be a second-year doctoral student in the School Psychology program at ËÄÉ«AV. Jess is a Kenyan-American born and raised in New Jersey. She received her B.A. in Psychology in the Cognitive Science Honors Track with a minor in Classical Voice at William Paterson ËÄÉ«AV (WPU) in Wayne, New Jersey in 2024. During her undergraduate studies, Jess completed a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at ËÄÉ«AV of Nebraska - Lincoln in Engineering Education. Her work focused on changes in instructor facilitation of learning communities in university engineering classrooms before, during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. This experience inspired her to amplify the voices of her own community in the music department at WPU, culminating in an Honors Thesis that qualitatively analyzed the attitudes of university music students and faculty towards individual function, academia, and community post-Covid-19. Jess's research interests include systems of support in university music education, African and Black American students in the public school system, factors that affect accessibility to mental health resources and visibility of school psychologists in the public school system, and applications of global school psychology in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Elyssa Kristine Marie Granados Lou

Elyssa is a first-year doctoral student in the School Psychology program at ËÄÉ«AV. She earned her B.S. in Psychology from UMBC in 2022 and completed an honors thesis on factors that hinder and encourage Filipino-American mental health help-seeking behaviors. During and after her undergraduate education, Elyssa worked as a registered behavior technician at an early-intervention center for Autistic children and taught special education students in preschool, second, and third grade. In 2025, she earned her M.S. in Quantitative Methodology: Measurement and Statistics from ËÄÉ«AV. Additionally, she is a Graduate Assistant for the College of Education's Assessment Office. Her research interests include the mental health of multicultural and Asian American youth, parent-child relationships/parental involvement in risk and resilience factors, and the cultural responsiveness of mental health and socio-emotional learning interventions.

Pearl Lena Sun

Pearl is a first-year doctoral student in the School Psychology program at ËÄÉ«AV. Pearl received her Bachelor’s in Statistics at the ËÄÉ«AV of Michigan in 2022 and her Master’s in Clinical Psychological Sciences at ËÄÉ«AV in 2024. Her research interests include the cultural adaptation of evidence-based interventions and the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods to understand intergenerational processes of risk and resilience in culturally diverse families.