Developmental Intelligence Lab

A good team is made of strong players. The Developmental Intelligence Lab is always seeking to recruit young players who are highly motivated to work hard to reach to the next level. Contemporary science is increasingly interdisciplinary. Future scholars need to be trained to not only be an expert of a specific field but also be knowledgeable about multiple disparate fields. The Developmental Intelligence Lab has been an intellectual home for postdoc fellows, graduate and undergraduate students with different backgrounds, including psychology, cognitive science, computer science, data science and speech and hearing sciences. The lab culture encourages members coming from different fields to learn from each other, and to develop a deep understanding and an appreciation of multiple scientific fields. In our lab meetings, for example, we may discuss a paper on how children learn language one week, followed by a paper on deep neural networks for visual object recognition the week after. Learning to take different perspectives will help trainees to broaden their horizons, think “big” and "deep", and learn needed technical skills to be better prepared as an all-around scientist.

If you are interested in joining the team, please reach out to Dr. Chen Yu (chenyu@austin.utexas.edu) or current lab members to learn more about the team.

Our graduate students excel in research on developmental learning and cognition, typical and atypical development, modeling, and computer vision. Students gain skills in advanced computational techniques and state-of-the-art research technology.

Dr. Chen Yu’s graduate students are typically completing PhDs in Developmental Psychology and Cognitive Science. Meanwhile, our research work is highly interdiciplinary, aiming at bridging human learning and machine learning. Students in other areas, such as computer science, data science, speech and hearing sciences, are encouraged to reach out expressing interest. Multiple academic pathways lead to a successful graduate career and the collaborative nature of UT Austin permits many of our students to be co-mentored with professors across different areas and departments.

Interested students are encouraged to explore our recent work , and talk to our current lab members about their research and experiences in the lab, as well as directly contact Dr. Chen Yu.

We are always looking for motivated undergraduate students to help us with our research!

Research assistants work closely with a graduate student or post-doc in the lab, help with behavioral coding (like transcribing speech or categorizing child reaches), attend lab meetings, read and discuss papers with their mentor, and even collect data when participants visit the lab.

If you have questions about working in the lab or want to learn more, feel free to reach out to any of our current lab members or Dr. Chen Yu. We accept applications throughout the year and will conduct interviews when there is an open position.

To apply, please complete our RA application form and return it to us following the directions on the form. Selected students may choose to enroll in course credits

Our research work relies on applying data mining and machine learning tools to analyze video, audio, eye tracking and motion tracking data. If you are interested in developing data analytics tools for science, please reach out to Dr. Chen Yu to learn about any open positions. If you are interested in joining the lab as a lab manager, research coordinator, or high school intern, you can also directly contact Dr. Chen Yu.

After Steven Elmlinger, Sven Bambach and Drew Abney left, we are also looking for a goalie for Life on Marr!