Highlighting Olena Zyga

Meet Olena Zyga, a developmental psychologist, who is a 5th-year PhD student in the DCAS program. Olena’s primary research interests have focused along two main lines of work. The first is characterization of early social cognitive ability and parent-child interaction through the use of behavioral and biological measures across typical and atypical development. A second line of research has focused on using this knowledge to develop novel ways of intervening with populations who evidence deficits in these areas, such as Prader-Willi Syndrome and autism spectrum disorder. She will be graduating in May and beginning a post-doctoral position at Stanford University in the Social Neurosciences Research Program under Dr. Karen Parker. Olena’s primary PhD advisers have been Sandra Russ and Anastasia Dimitropoulos.