Sasha Santini-Bishop

Sasha is a 2026.5 Yale College senior in Berkeley pursuing a B.S. in Psychology, and has been a lab member since her second year. Her interests lie in studying adverse childhood experiences, parent-child dyadic relationships, and risk and protective factors as they relate to emotion regulation, the onset of childhood mental health symptoms, and neurodevelopmental trajectories. Sasha aspires to attend graduate school for Clinical Psychology and work with children and families. She has worked closely with children on a wide spectrum of neurodivergence and across settings, including as a mental health worker in a clinical respite day program to support social and emotional regulation skills and as a research team member at the University of New Mexico’s site for the national HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) study. Her love for children extends beyond research, and she is also a student teacher for preschoolers at the Creating Kids Childcare Center in New Haven. This year, Sasha has been appointed to serve as a senior mentor for the undergraduate department of Psychology and is thrilled to help fellow psychology students navigate Yale. In the lab this year, she conducts visits and helps manage our pilot fNIRS study. She's also working toward her senior thesis on functional connectivity correlations with internalizing vs. externalizing symptoms and adverse experiences in childhood. Though she calls New Mexico home, Sasha is happy to spend her time in New Haven expanding her passion and knowledge to better inform her long-term work in child advocacy, research, and care.