Current Members
Junxuan Zhao
PhD Student
Junxuan is a PhD student at the Centre for Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne. She graduated from the University of Melbourne in 2022 with a BSc in Psychology and in 2024 with an MBiomedSc. Her research focuses on the relationship between parenting and brain development in adolescents, particularly how parenting influences adolescent emotion regulation. She is especially interested in the underlying mechanisms linking parental behaviours to emotion regulation ability in children and adolescents.
Muskan Khetan
PhD Student
Muskan's research focuses on how both long-term and short-term fluctuations in pubertal hormones, particularly oestradiol (E2) and progesterone, influence neurobiological mechanisms involved in emotional regulation in adolescent females, thereby increasing their risk for mental health issues. Her PhD work leverages large-scale public datasets, including the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study and the Emotional Learning and Memory (ELM) Study, to gain deeper insights into brain development and emotional regulation.
Lucy Zhang
Phd Student
Lucy is a final-year PhD student in the Neurodevelopment Lab. Her research examines the concept of resilience, which broadly refers to the dynamic process of adaptation following experiences of threats or challenges to one’s survival. Specifically, her work examines how psychosocial factors and brain development contribute to resilience against the negative mental health effects of childhood adversity during adolescence.
Dhatsayini Rattambige
PhD Student (ACU)
Shayini's research is in the field of Neuroscience and Addiction, focusing on the long-term neurodevelopmental impacts of childhood adversities and early alcohol exposure on youth brain development. Her research draws on data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study and the Australian Child Maltreatment Study. Shayini is supervised by Prof. Michael Cole (Faculty of Health Sciences), Prof. Daryl Higgins (ICPS Director), and Prof. Sarah Whittle (University of Melbourne)
Stephanie Hartanto
PhD Student
Stephanie is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, supervised by Professor Sarah Whittle and Dr Catherine Orr. Her research examines the relationship between childhood adversity and brain development, with a particular focus on sensitive periods—developmental windows of heightened vulnerability to adversity. In her PhD, she investigates how the timing of adversity, considering both chronological age and pubertal development, influences structural and functional brain changes, with implications for mental health and broader functional outcomes.
Jia Teo
Clinical MA/PhD Student (UNSW)
Jia is interested in understanding how early life experiences can influence our emotion regulation later in life. Her PhD research focuses on the effects of childhood maltreatment on fear regulation in adolescents, including the risk and protective factors that may moderate the effects of adverse childhood experiences. She is supervised by Professor Rick Richardson (UNSW), Professor Sarah Whittle (University of Melbourne), and Dr Kathryn Baker (LaTrobe University).
Sylvia Lin
PhD Student
Sylvia is interested in understanding how environmental factors influence child and adolescent brain development, and how brain mechanisms may contribute to behavioural and socioemotional functioning. Her PhD research leverages randomised controlled trial design and fMRI techniques to investigate whether supportive parenting can foster healthy emotion regulation neural function and, in turn, improve mental health outcomes in early adolescents. By bridging neuroscience and clinical practice, she aims to advance the development of evidence-based, neuroscience-informed interventions that promote better mental health outcomes for young people.
Qingwen Ding
Research Fellow
Qingwen is exploring the interplay between the brain, genes, and environments in adolescent mental health, using a longitudinal design that integrates neuroimaging and genetic data. Her research focuses on uncovering the biological mechanisms underlying depression and anxiety symptoms.
