People – Yoona Kang

Lab Director

Yoona Kang, PhD

Yoona Kang (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University – Camden. Kang’s research focuses on how social experiences influence the health of individuals and groups. She examines evidence-based prevention strategies, such as compassion, purpose in life, and mindfulness interventions, and integrate neurocognitive and social network levels of analysis to understand and prevent health risks among diverse populations. She also identifies barriers and facilitators to implementing interventions and use innovative technologies for regional- and population-level dissemination. She takes multimethod approaches that integrate experimental and behavioral paradigms, computational neuroimaging techniques, ecological momentary assessment, social-network analysis, and natural language processing. She has applied these methods to intertwined dimensions of wellness, including physical activity, alcohol drinking, social connection, and loneliness. Kang received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from University of California, Los Angeles, and Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Yale University. Post PhD, Kang conducted research as a postdoctoral researcher and research director at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.

Postdoctoral Researcher

Elizabeth Baik

Elizabeth Baik (she/her) is a media and communication researcher who focuses on the dynamic co-construction of communal resilience through storytelling and everyday conversations among individuals. Elizabeth received her bachelor’s degree from New York University, Master of Social Work degree from University of Southern California, and Ph.D. in Media and Communication from Temple University. For her dissertation research, she examined various psychological and physiological processes that lead to emerging behaviors of supportive communication in response to another’s self-disclosure of sexual assault. As the postdoctoral research associate of the Compassion and Well-Being Lab, Elizabeth assists the lab director in developing and implementing an app-based intervention to investigate the effects of kindness and compassion on health and well-being.

Graduate Students

Isabelle Surielow

Isabelle’s research interests center around how values such as compassion may vary across different social and economic statuses and potential implications of such differences. She is intrigued by the spread of compassion and how compassion relates to upward mobility in children and young adults.

Xuanzhou Du

Xuanzhou’s research seeks to answer two main questions: 1) how pursuing certain values or beliefs fulfills psychological needs, particularly existential ones like finding meaning in life; and 2) how individuals from different social and economic backgrounds explain these values and beliefs, and how this relates to their health and well-being.

Morenike Alugo

Morenike Alugo is a second-year Ph.D. student in Prevention Science at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on leveraging technology to enhance psychological well-being, with a particular emphasis on child and adolescent mental health in the digital age. She is passionate about exploring the impact of social media, digital interactions, and technology on youth development and learning. Her work also emphasizes promoting positive youth development, civic engagement, and fostering character strengths.