Explore Developmental Science at BU!
Faculty members with the graduate program in Developmental Science (DS) at Boston University are seeking talented and motivated students to join their labs. The DS program, which offers students the opportunity to earn a PhD, is part of the Psychological & Brain Sciences Department, one of the fastest-growing and most innovative departments in the country. Applications are currently being accepted for Fall 2021. You can find the full list of lab openings below.
BU’s comprehensive DS doctoral program, which covers the depth and breadth of the entire discipline, provides students advanced training in developmental psychology, with an emphasis on early childhood. Faculty members are nationally and internationally renowned, with projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, as well as by prestigious foundations such as the Simons Foundation and Templeton Foundation. The program features one of only three Autism Centers of Excellence in the country.
The DS graduate program offers unique research opportunities across different developmental domains using multiple methodologies. Robust collaborations—local, national, and international—help drive the program’s progress and innovation. Researchers also work across DS labs and departmental programs, as well as with colleagues in other schools at the University. This distinguishing feature means that DS students gain particularly broad, hands-on training.
Boston University is located in the heart of the historic and culturally vibrant city of Boston, the epicenter of higher education, cutting-edge technology, and pioneering medicine.
The application deadline is Dec. 1, 2020. Information on how to apply can be found here. Please note that submitting GRE scores is optional. Interested students are encouraged to contact potential faculty mentors soon. If you have specific questions about the DS graduate program, please email Amanda Tarullo at atarullo@bu.edu. For general PhD inquiries, please contact Joanne Hebden Palfai, director of academic affairs for the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, at jpalfai@bu.edu. General information on the Child Development Labs at Boston University is available at http://www.bu.edu/cdl/.
Below is the full list of DS faculty. Faculty who are accepting new students are marked with an *
* Peter Blake directs the Social Development & Learning Lab and studies social cognitive development with a particular focus on how children navigate social interactions in a material world. Research topics include altruism, ownership, cooperation and competition, fairness and other social norms, and social learning and cultural differences. He can be reached at pblake@bu.edu.
* Deborah Kelemen studies cognitive development and directs the Child Cognition Lab. Her interests include how children and adults categorize and reason about the artificial and natural worlds; conceptual constraints on intuitive, religious, and scientific theory formation; the development of social and moral cognition; and cultural and individual differences in cognition. She can be reached at dkelemen@bu.edu.
* Melissa Kibbe studies how infants, children, and adults represent objects, number, and people, the kinds of computations we can do with these representations, and the ways in which these representations may support formal learning. She directs the Developing Minds Lab and can be reached at kibbe@bu.edu.
* Kimberly Saudino is the director of the Boston University Twin Project. She uses twins to study how genetic and environmental factors influence the development of multiple facets of child behavior, including child temperament, parenting, behavior problems, and social cognition. She can be reached at ksaudino@bu.edu.
* Helen Tager-Flusberg directs the Center for Autism Research Excellence where she studies language and early development in autism spectrum disorder. Her research addresses questions about the mechanisms underlying language and social communicative impairment using multiple methodologies including EEG/ERP and fNIRS, as well as novel approaches to assessment and intervention. She can be reached at htagerf@bu.edu.
* Amanda Tarullo studies the effects of early-life stress and adversity on neural and behavioral development. Her interests include understanding how parents help young children to regulate stress, the interplay of infant and maternal biological stress, and identifying neural markers of risk in early childhood. She directs the Brain & Early Experiences Lab and can be reached at atarullo@bu.edu.
* Nicholas Wagner examines the enduring impact of early experiences and relationships (e.g., parent-child relationships, sibling relationships) on children’s social and emotional development.
He is particularly interested in the processes through which psychobiological and environmental factors promote psychosocial adaptation or contribute to the emergence of psychopathology. He directs the Biobehavioral and Social Emotional Development Lab and can be reached at njwagner@bu.edu.