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CONFERENCE HOSTS

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Nicole Albada – UC Santa Barbara 

Nicole Alea Albada received her PhD in 2004 in Developmental Psychology from the University of Florida, with an emphasis on adult development and aging, and graduate certificates in Gerontology and Social Science methodology. Nicole began her position as an Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara in 2018, after teaching and conducting research for over 10 years in the Caribbean. She primarily teaches research methods and statistics to undergraduate students in the Psychological and Brain Sciences Department, and sometimes teaches an adult development and aging course. Nicole is the director of the TALE – Thinking About Life Experiences – Lab, which explores why and how people remember events from their life, and the links between remembering autobiographical events and psychosocial well-being in various age groups and across cultures. She has recently broadened her area of research to include understanding the role of personal stories as a pedagogical tool in both in-person and online classroom environments.

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Victoria Cross – UC Davis

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Emma Geller – UC San Diego

Emma Geller received her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2016. Since then she has been an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Psychology department at UC San Diego. Her primary research interest is the science of learning and instruction, and her work investigates how students develop deep understanding of concepts in math and science. Past and current projects focus on questions such as: (1) How do questions help people learn? (2) What is the role of surprise and confusion in addressing students’ misconceptions? (3) How do engagement and cognitive load interact to support or hinder effective learning from videos? She is particularly interested in the use of multimedia technologies to support and improve student learning, both in face-to-face classes and online.

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Annie Ditta – UC Riverside 

Dr. Annie S. Ditta is an Assistant Professor of Teaching at UC Riverside. She received her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from UC Santa Cruz under the direction of Dr. Benjamin C. Storm and recently completed a year as a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Rachel Wu at UC Riverside. Annie’s research investigates the complex interplay between memory and creativity, with particular focus on how people’s ability to both remember and forget helps them produce novel ideas and avoid becoming fixated on old or unhelpful ones. As an Assistant Professor of Teaching, she uses her knowledge of fixation and experience teaching to inform studies of undergraduate learning. The ultimate goals of her research are threefold: 1) to help students develop their critical and creative thinking skills, 2) increase motivation to learn, and 3) to design better methods of instruction for large lecture courses at the university level. Before pursuing graduate studies, she completed her undergraduate education at the University of California, Irvine, where she received her B.A. in Psychology (cognitive psychology track).

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Melissa Paquette-Smith – UCLA  

Melissa is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of Psychology at UCLA. Prior to teaching at UCLA, she completed her doctorate in Psychology at the University of Toronto. Melissa’s research interests span a broad range of topics in psychology, including children’s early social and linguistic development and improving psychology instruction. In her developmental research, she examines how infants and young children process social information in the speech signal and how this relates to the development of linguistic and social competencies. Her pedagogical work has focused on ways to optimize student learning in the classroom. In particular, she is interested in how student’s language background and life experiences influence learning.

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Celeste Pilegard- UC San Diego

Dr. Pilegard received her Ph.D. in Psychological and Brain Sciences from the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Her research falls at the intersection of cognitive psychology and educational psychology: she is interested in how we learn and how, as a consequence, we should teach.

A major focus of her research is facilitating transfer– that is, helping students apply what they’ve learned to new situations.  Areas of investigation include educational games, spatial skills, metacognition, gesture, and multimedia learning.

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Vanessa Woods – UC Santa Barbara 

Vanessa Woods, Ph.D. is an Assistant Teaching Professor (LPSOE) at the University of California Santa Barbara. She is an expert in effective teaching practices and student success research. Vanessa is passionate about increasing success in ALL students, and her research looks at how traditionally underrepresented groups can be successful in educational settings. Vanessa is affiliated with the Opening New Doors to Accelerating Success (ONDAS) Center and the Transfer Student Center, which are dedicated to increasing the success of first-generation students and transfer student success respectively. Vanessa serves as a Faculty Advisor Board member for the Certificate for College and University Teaching. As a trained teacher of culturally aware mentorship practices, she serves as a mentor trainer and faculty supporter for the ONDAS and Transfer Student Centers. In addition, she coordinates and leads campus-wide workshops for staff to explore culturally aware mentorship practices.

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