Principal Investigator

Pan Liu

Dr. Pan Liu is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Dr. Liu is interested in socioemotional processing in children and adolescents and how these processes, via interactions with other individual and environmental factors, are implicated in both typical socioemotional development and the development of anxiety and depression. She takes a multi-method approach to investigating these questions, including behavioral, EEG/ERP, MRI, and eye-tracking measures. Recent research interests include (1) examining socioemotional processing in naturalistic settings, e.g., during social media use and (2) using novel methodologies to analyze ERP data (e.g., trial-level analysis). 

Before joining UAlberta, Dr. Liu was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at North Dakota State University. She completed her postdoctoral training at the Department of Psychology and the Brain & Mind Institute at Western University (with Drs. Elizabeth Hayden and Marc Joanisse) and the Department of Psychology and the Child Study Center at the Pennsylvania State University (with Drs. Pamela Cole and ‪Koraly Pérez-Edgar)‬. She obtained her PhD degree at the School of Communication Sciences & Disorders, McGill University (advised by Dr. Marc Pell). She was the recipient of the APS Rising Star Award in 2021. 

Dr. Liu is accepting graduate students in the Developmental Science area at UAlberta (see Prospective Students). She is NOT accepting undergraduate research/honors students for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Graduate Student

Jaron Tan

I am a second-year graduate student of Psychology at North Dakota State University. In 2020, I came to the United States as an international transfer student from Malaysia. I received my B.S. in Psychology (Hons) and a minor in Neuroscience at NDSU. During my undergraduate studies, I took part in several research projects, including an honor thesis that examined the relationship between individual vulnerability and well-being during a the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, I have developed an interest in the study of psychopathology. Using a multi-method approach (e.g., EEG, behavioral and self-report measures), I am interested in studying the developmental trajectories of anxiety and depression, and the significance of emotion regulation in emerging youths. Upon completing my graduate training, I intend to leverage my knowledge and research skills to promote greater public communication of psychopathology research in the Malaysian community.

Postbaccalaureate/Undergraduate Students

Avigna Jena

This past summer (2024), I graduated from the University of Alberta with a General Sciences degree, double majoring in Biology and Psychology. Although I initially began my degree with Biology as my major and Psychology as my minor, I found that psychology was a lot more interesting to me, which prompted me to switch to a double major. As I completed more courses, I found that I was passionate about social psychology and neuroscience, and I strived to do research related to these fields. I found Dr. Liu’s Emotion, Neuroscience & Development Lab to be an interesting and pertinent intersection of my interests. I was selected as a recipient for the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA), which I will be completing under the supervision of Dr. Liu. My current research project involves investigating how exposure to the “thin ideal” in media influences the self-referential processing of women.