Our People
Lab Director
Meingold Hiu-ming Chan, Ph.D. (she/her)
Assistant Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Science (with courtesy appointment in Psychological Sciences, Neuroscience and Behavior and Social areas)
Dr. Meingold Chan is a developmental scientist who studies children’s socioemotional development and health from a biopsychosocial, multicultural, and family system perspective. Dr. Chan’s interdisciplinary research bridges developmental psychology, cultural psychology, and social epigenetics. She earned her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Science, with a graduate specialization in Quantitative Research Methods, from The Ohio State University (2021), after a Master of Philosophy in Social and Developmental Psychology from the University of Cambridge (2016) and a Bachelor of Social Science (major in Psychology and Counseling) from the University of Hong Kong (2015). Before joining Purdue, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in social epigenetics at the University of British Columbia, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
Her work has appeared in journals such as Psychoendocrinology, Developmental Psychobiology, Health Psychology, Cognitive Development, and Emotion.
Areas of expertise: children’s socioemotional development · family emotion socialization · sociocultural perspectives · biological embedding of social experience · social epigenetics · advanced quantitative methods
Teaching and Mentorship
Courses:
HDFS 628 Structural Equation Modeling
HDFS 346 Research Method & Program evaluation
HDFS 690 Directed Research In HDFS
Teaching and mentoring students are central to Dr. Chan’s academic experience. Her philosophy is to create an inclusive, supportive, and engaging environment where each student can identify and reach their own potential. Dr. Chan meets students where they are rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach.
As a first-generation graduate student herself, Dr. Chan sets clear expectations from the start, asks mentees directly about the kind of support they need, and gives timely, constructive feedback. She also encourages students to think critically through a cultural lens, weaving cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspectives into her teaching and mentorship.
Dr. Chan has mentored 20+ undergraduate research assistants and independent study students, and has co-mentored students through master’s and doctoral theses. She gives mentees real ownership over their research questions, hands-on training in quantitative methods (R programming, including Structural Equation Modelling, interaction/moderations, and epigenetic analyses), as well as support toward conference presentations and publications.
Lab Members
Huen Lam
Postbacc Research Assistant and Lab Manager
Huen Lam
Postbacc Research Assistant and Lab Manager
Huen is a Research Assistant and Lab Manager at the BPsyDec Lab. Her research interest centers on mental health and socioemotional development across the lifespan, particularly how diverse family and cultural contexts shape developmental outcomes. Her background includes extensive experience in human rights advocacy focused on displaced communities. She recently coauthored a chapter on gene–environment interplay in socioemotional development, forthcoming in The Cambridge Handbook of Developmental Gene–Environment Interplay: A Lifespan Perspective (Cambridge University Press). She plans to pursue postgraduate studies in clinical psychology in the future.
Jennifer Hu
Graduate Student (Independent Study)
Jennifer Hu
Graduate Student (Independent Study)
Jennifer is interested in parent-child synchrony (e.g., where parents and adolescents feel, act, and/or physiologically respond in similar ways together) across modalities (emotional, behavioral, and physiological) and time scales (momentary, daily, and eventually monthly) in order to better understand the role of this attunement in the development of healthy relationships and the mental health of parents and youth.
Siqi Zhang
Graduate Student (Independent Study)
Siqi Zhang
Graduate Student (Independent Study)
Siqi Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate in Human Development and Family Science at Purdue University. Her research examines how parents’ motivational beliefs, home environment, and parent–child interaction inform young children’s early mathematics development. She is particularly interested in family math engagement, achievement motivation, home-school partnerships, and the ways families and educators can create equitable opportunities for early learning.