Kaya de Barbaro
Assistant Professor — Ph.D., University of California San Diego
Contact
- E-mail: kaya@austin.utexas.edu
- Office: CLA 4.520
Interests
behavior, social interactions, development, dynamical systems theory, mobile sensing, machine learning, mental health
Biography
I will not be accepting new graduate students for the Fall of 2019.
My background is in cognitive science, an interdisciplinary field where I was trained in methods and theories from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and computer science. My expertise is in developmental science, and my work spans the domains of social, cognitive, motor, and physiological development. Across these domains, I have characterized the microdynamics of infants’ activity—as they use their eyes and hands to play and explore while expressing patterns of arousal and affect. To capture infants’ activity in high resolution, I have used tools ranging from fine-grained video analyses to eyetracking and physiological sensors. I have developed a unique methodological toolkit to make sense of and quantify theoretically-interesting patterns in these high-density datasets.
My current research is in the emerging field of computational behavioral science, bridging insights from developmental science, clinical psychology, computer science, and electrical engineering. My lab uses mobile and wearable sensors to gain unprecedented access into the daily experiences of mothers and their infants. The goals of this work are to access the basic mechanisms of maternal mental health and infant social-emotional development, and ultimately to develop “just in time” interventions for cases of high risk, such as the transmission of risks for depression from mothers to infants.
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Current UT students may apply to work with me through Eureka.
