About

Hello! I’m Yolanda, a first-year PhD student in Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

I am interested in how social interactions, whether in person or mediated by technology, engage emotion, perception, and memory to shape impressions, decisions, and the connections that sustain relationships. My work combines experimental and computational methods to investigate these dynamics across diverse social contexts.

Trajectory

• Sept 2026 🌟: Booth life begins! Started my PhD in Behavioral Science
• Jun 2026 🎉: Graduated from the University of Chicago with an M.A. in Computational Social Science
• Nov 2025 🗣️: Presented LLM-based memory scoring paper at AI4CSS Workshop at Washington DC
• Sept 2025 📑: First workshop paper accepted to the AI4CSS Workshop at ICDMW 2025 (IEEE) (on LLM-based memory scoring)
• Mar 2025 🧠: Began research assistantship with Yuan Chang Leong at the Computational Affective and Social Neuroscience Laboratory
• May 2024 🎉: Graduated magna cum laude from Tulane University with dual degrees in Psychology and Finance
• Jan 2024 🤖: Began research assistantship with Eugina Leung on human–AI collaboration in workplace conflict resolution
• May 2023 📊: Began research and teaching assistantship with Yumei He: served as teaching assistant for Business Analytics and conducted research on GenAI adoption and labor-market efficiency modeling
• Mar 2022 🌱: My first research experience! Joined the Social Relations and Wellness Lab led by Lisa Molix at Tulane University, contributing to projects on corporate communication and social justice