May 2026:<\/strong> Congratulations to Huynh Huynh and Yongxin Huang on completing their master’s degree!<\/p>\n April 2026<\/strong>: Congratulations to Kathy Sem who successfully defended her dissertation. We are so proud of you!<\/p>\n April 2026<\/strong>: Congratulations to Shreeya Khullar on successfully defending their Honors Thesis!<\/p>\n Shreeya Khullar defended their Honors Thesis, “Parasympathetic Functioning as a Moderator of Attention to Social Fear in Children with Callous-Unemotional Traits”.<\/p>\n February 2026: <\/strong>Members of the BASE lab attended the Eastern Psychological Association (EPA) conference in Boston to present their research!<\/p>\n Maxine Bailey (Lab Manager) presented her poster, “Association between Parenting and Parents\u2019 Physiology Regulation”.<\/p>\n Shreeya Khullar (undergraduate RA) presented their poster, “Examining parasympathetic reactivity to fearful stimuli in children with callous-unemotional traits”.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n November 2025: <\/strong>Members of the BASE Lab traveled to San Diego to present at the 58th annual International Society for Developmental Psychobiology (ISDP) Conference! Dr. Nick Wagner, Nicole Huth (PhD student), Kathy Sem (PhD).<\/span><\/p>\n September 2025\/January 2026:<\/strong> Congratulations to undergraduate RAs Isabella Kijek and Ravienne Hodgson for receiving UROP funding for the Fall 2025 semester, and to RA Giselle Perez for receiving UROP funding for the Spring 2025 semester!<\/p>\n Isabella Kijek presented her UROP poster, “Developing a Structured Pipeline for Heart Rate Variability Data Processing in Early Childhood”.<\/p>\n May 2025: <\/strong>Members of the BASE lab attended the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) conference to present their research! Nicole Huth (PhD student) and Kathy Sem (PhD student).<\/span><\/p>\n Congratulations to our 2025 graduates<\/strong> on successfully presenting their UROP presentations!<\/p>\n Krishi Shah presented her UROP poster, “Parental Pandemic Pressures: Examining the Link between Parental Stress during COVID-19 and Child Emotional and Behavioral Outcomes”.<\/p>\n Dafni Suresh presented her UROP poster, “Exploring associations between a novel computerized measure of affiliative preferences and race effects in children”.<\/p>\n Sophia Lin presented her UROP poster, “Exploring the associations between parenting stress, parental reports of child anxiety, and measured behavioral inhibition”.<\/p>\n Dr. Sarah Vogel (postdoc)<\/strong>: accepted a assistant professor position at UMass Boston! Check out the Early Minds Lab<\/a>.<\/p>\n May 2025<\/strong>: Congratulations to Sarah Lynch who successfully defended her dissertation, “Validation of a novel task-based approach to assessing children’s affiliative preferences: Examining the role of affiliation in the development of CU traits and conduct problems”. So proud!<\/p>\n May 2025<\/strong>: Congratulations to Grace Landis for completing her master’s degree!<\/p>\n June 2024: <\/strong>Dr. Nicholas Wagner presented his talk, entitled “Examining the role of vagal flexibility in response to an early multi-component intervention for inhibited young children,” at the International Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology (ISRCAP)!<\/p>\n June 2024:\u00a0<\/strong>Raina Kim, M.A., has been accepted into PCOM’s clinical PsyD program! Congrats Raina!<\/p>\n June 2024:\u00a0<\/strong>Members of the BASE Lab traveled to Cyprus for the 10th biennial meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy!<\/p>\n Sarah Lynch (PhD student) received the Cheryl-Wynn-Hare Award for her presentation “Exploring Patterns of Affiliation Underlying Callous-Unemotional Traits in Early Childhood via a Novel Computerized Assessment”!<\/p>\n Nicole Huth (PhD student) presented her findings examining the neurophysiological and environmental mechanisms underlying CU trait development!<\/p>\n April 2024: <\/strong>Congratulations to the numerous members of the BASE lab who have been accepted into graduate programs and faculty positions! Our awesome BASE team members are on to accomplish great things!<\/p>\n Nila Shakiba (postdoc)<\/strong>: accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position at Auburn University! She also serves as the Director of the Psychobiology, Early Experiences, and Resilience Laboratory (PEARL)<\/a> within the Department of Human Development and Family Science.<\/span> March 2024:\u00a0<\/strong>Dr. Sarah Vogel was interviewed about her gut microbiome research for a podcast about child development! Click here to listen to it!<\/a><\/p>\n March 2024:\u00a0<\/strong>Members of the BASE lab traveled to the Eastern Psychological Association (EPA) conference in Philadelphia to present their research!<\/p>\n Kathy Sem (PhD student) gave a talk about her research on parent-child language matching (LSM) and Behavioral Inhibition (BI) Post-Intervention!<\/p>\n Nicole Huth (PhD student) presented her poster, “Links Between Childhood Effortful Control and Externalizing Psychopathology: A Bi-factor Modeling Approach”<\/p>\n Polina Perelstein (Research Coordinator) presented her poster, “Parenting Practices and Child Emotion Regulation Over Three months of the Pandemic: The Moderating Role of Cultural Tightness”<\/p>\n Amanda Swartz (MA student) presented her poster, “Secure Attachment and Child Self-Regulation: Unraveling Dynamics in Conflict Discussions.”<\/p>\n While in Philadelphia, our team had dinner with our collaborators at the University of Pennsylvania’s EDEN Lab<\/a>! What a busy weekend!<\/p>\n January 2024:\u00a0<\/strong>Congratulations to Marcos Coli for completing his master’s degree! Huge shoutout also to our former intern Eden Park for getting accepted into her dream college, Cornell.<\/p>\n August 2023:<\/strong> RISE Symposium ’23. We are so proud to see off our high school summer interns, Eden Park and Sophia Lam! Eden presented a poster about her work on processing gaze data from our new mobile eye-tracking glasses, and <\/span>Sophia presented her findings about the interaction between parenting practices, culture, and child anxiety from our international COVID study, COPES (Coronavirus Outbreak Parenting and Emotions Study).<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n March 2023:<\/strong> Dr. Nick Wagner, Dr. Nila Shakiba, and graduate student Kathy Sem gave talks on their research at the Society for Research in Child Development!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n March 2023: <\/strong>Graduate student Kathy Sem presented her research on parent-child language style matching (LSM) and children’s social competence at the Eastern Psychological Association (EPA) conference in Boston!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n November 2022:\u00a0<\/strong>Members of the BASE Lab traveled to San Diego to present at the 55th annual International Society for Developmental Psychobiology (ISDP) Conference! Dr. Nick Wagner, Dr. Nila Shakiba, Kathy Sem, Sarah Lynch, Tori Keefauver, and Kendall Andrews.<\/p>\n October 2022:<\/strong> BASE Lab RA Rutva Bhatt presented her research on the associations between skin conductance response and CU traits during a novel variation of the Trier Social Stress Test at the Boston University Undergraduate Research Symposium. Nice work, Rutva!<\/p>\n March 2022:\u00a0<\/strong>We are excited to announce that we have received notice of award for a new collaborative NIMH R21<\/a> with Dr. Rebecca Waller and Dr. AJ Rosellini to validate a coding scheme to assess RDoC social constructs and to use machine learning to identify risk for CU traits.<\/p>\n January 2022:<\/strong> Congratulations to undergraduate RAs Tori Keefauver and Kendall Andrews for receiving UROP funding for the Spring 2022 semester! Tori’s project will explore relations between parents’ use of language and children’s physiological regulation during emotional conversations. Kendall will continue their work examining dynamic changes in children’s physiological regulation while they watch emotional videos. RA Erin Duffy will continue her work examining the role of parental social support in buffering families from pandemic-related stress.<\/p>\n January 2022:\u00a0<\/strong>Dr. Wagner received notice of award for the lab’s first NIH-funded R01<\/a>! This collaborative longitudinal study with Dr. Rebecca Waller’s lab at the University of Pennsylvania will investigate early risk pathways to the development of callous-unemotional traits.<\/p>\n December 2021:\u00a0<\/strong>Congratulations to undergraduate research assistant Ankur Bamezai on graduating! We know you’ll make an excellent teacher and wish you all the best!<\/p>\n December 2021:<\/strong> Dr. Wagner spoke to BU’s Arts & Sciences Magazine<\/a> about the importance of parents discussing emotions with their children.<\/p>\n October 2021:<\/strong> BASE Lab RA Erin Duffy presented her work on the impacts of parental social support on child outcomes during the pandemic at the Boston University Undergraduate Research Symposium. Great work, Erin! September 2021:<\/strong> Congratulations to undergraduate RA Kendall Andrews for receiving UROP funding for the fall semester! Their project will examine dynamic changes in children’s physiological regulation while they watch emotional videos.<\/p>\n August 2021<\/strong>: Dr. Wagner spoke to\u00a0Bostonia<\/a> about the COPES study and the impact of COVID-19 on children and families.<\/p>\n June 2021:\u00a0<\/strong>Congratulations to undergraduate RA Erin Duffy for receiving the UROP Global Challenge Research Award! This award will provide one year of funding for her research project entitled ‘How does the type and amount of parental social support buffer against stress from COVID to promote parent and child mental health?’\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n May 2021:\u00a0<\/strong>Congratulations to undergraduate research assistants Natasha Soesanto, Maya Delity, and Liz Hinds, MA student Yue Sun, and MPH student Cameron Cooper, on graduating! We know will you go on to do great things!<\/p>\n May 2021:<\/strong> Members of the BASE Lab attended the Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy 2021 Early Career Event:<\/p>\n April 2021:\u00a0<\/strong>Dr. Wagner received notice that the BASE Lab was awarded an R03 from the National Institutes of Health<\/a> alongside collaborators at the University of Maryland to examine neurophysiological predictors of treatment response to a multi-component intervention for socially inhibited preschoolers.<\/span><\/p>\n April 2021: <\/strong>Members of the BASE Lab attended the Society for Research in Child Development 2021 Biennial Meeting:<\/p>\n April 5th, 2021:\u00a0<\/strong>The BASE Lab welcomes two brand new junior scientists with the birth of Dr. Wagner’s twins, Maddox and Reuben!<\/p>\n March 2021: <\/strong>BASE Lab RA Erin Duffy was awarded a UROP scholarship for the Summer 2021 semester. Her project will look at parental social support as a buffer against the impact of COVID-related stress on parent and child mental health. Congrats, Erin!<\/p>\n January 2021: <\/strong>BASE Lab RA Liz Hinds was awarded a UROP scholarship for the Spring 2021 semester. Her project will look at emotion language and self-regulation in parents and children. Congrats, Liz!<\/p>\n December 2020:\u00a0<\/strong>Dr. Wagner spoke to BU Experts<\/a> about an exciting new project in the BASE Lab, an NIMH-funded study examining the effects of the gut microbiome on mental health from birth to age 5 years.<\/p>\n September 2020: <\/strong>Dr. Wagner’s advice about parenting in a pandemic was featured in Medium,<\/a>\u00a0Futurity,<\/a> Fox 4 News<\/a>, and BU’s the Brink<\/a>.<\/p>\n April 2020<\/strong>: Research by Dr. Wagner was featured in BU’s the Brink<\/a> and Futurity<\/a>.<\/p>\n January 2020:<\/strong> Research by Dr. Wagner and Dr. Waller, BASE Lab collaborator from the University of Pennsylvania, was featured on EurekAlert<\/a> and Penn Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n November 2019:<\/strong> BASE Lab RAs Maya Delity and Natasha Soesanto were awarded full Undergraduate Research Opportunity research scholarships for Spring 2020. Congratulations!<\/p>\n October 2019:\u00a0<\/strong>Congratulations to Natasha Soesanto on presenting her poster at the 22nd Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium that featured the research she did at BASE Lab this summer!<\/p>\n September 2019<\/strong>: Congratulations to Natasha Soesanto for being accepted into the Brigham and Women Hospital\u2019s Medical Career Exploration Volunteer Program!<\/p>\n Summer 2019<\/strong>: Congratulations to BASE Lab research assistant Natasha Soesanto for being awarded a full UROP research scholarship for the summer!<\/p>\n April 2019:\u00a0<\/strong>Dr. Wagner was featured in the New Faculty Spotlight section of the BU Arts & Sciences newsletter, CAS News<\/em>. Read the newsletter here<\/a>.<\/p>\n April 2019<\/strong>: Check out BASE Lab’s blog post, Callous-Unemotional Traits: Differentiating Early Risk for Aggressive Behaviors, for the International Society for Research on Aggression here<\/a>.<\/p>\n April 2019:\u00a0<\/strong>Dr. Wagner was featured in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences article,\u00a0Meet Nick Wagner, Class of<\/em> 2016<\/em>. Read the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n March 2019<\/strong>: Dr. Wagner was interviewed for the Reuters Health article,\u00a0Women who vape around pregnancy may wrongly think it safe<\/em>. Read more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n 2018:<\/strong> Dr. Wagner was selected as a 2018 Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science. The APS Rising Star designation is presented to outstanding early career psychological scientists whose research has advanced the field. More information can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n July 2018:<\/strong> Dr. Wagner was selected by the International Society for Research in Aggression to participate in the Young Investigator Program. Learn more about the award here<\/a> and read the lab’s ISRA blog post here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BASE Lab Updates! May 2026: Congratulations to all our BASE Lab graduates! You will be missed. May 2026: Congratulations to Huynh Huynh and Yongxin Huang on completing their master’s degree! April 2026: Congratulations to Kathy Sem who successfully defended her dissertation. We are so proud of you! April 2026: Congratulations to Shreeya Khullar on successfully […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14431,"featured_media":0,"parent":5364,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cdl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5556"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cdl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cdl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cdl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14431"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cdl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5556"}],"version-history":[{"count":53,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cdl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9907,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cdl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5556\/revisions\/9907"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cdl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cdl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"\/cdl\/files\/2026\/05\/20260514_194324-358x636.jpg\")
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\nPolina Perelstein (staff)<\/strong>: accepted into the University of Alabama’s clinical psychology PhD program
\nKendall Andrews (staff)<\/strong>: accepted into law school at New York University (NYU)
\nAmanda Swartz (master’s student)<\/strong>: accepted a position as a Research Coordinator at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Tori Keefauver (undergraduate RA)<\/strong>:\u00a0 accepted into University of Pittsburgh’s PhD in Neuroscience program, Department of Biological Psychiatry
\nRenee Torio (undergraduate RA)<\/strong>:\u00a0 accepted into the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill to pursue an M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling
\nMaya Applbaum (undergraduate RA)<\/strong>: accepted into Boston University’s Masters in Social Work (MSW) program<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/cdl\/files\/2024\/03\/Sarah-Podcast.png\")
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