Dr. Zhiling Meng 

Jiacan He

Lab Manager 

Jiacan He is a Ph.D. student in Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She holds a strong quantitative background in applied microeconomics, causal inference, and data analysis, with research interests spanning education policy, labor markets, and social inequality. Her work combines large-scale administrative data, survey data, and econometric methods to study how institutional environments and policy interventions shape individual outcomes. As a Lab Manager in the Meng Lab, Jiacan supports the design, implementation, and analysis of research projects related to educational practices and student development. She looks forward to contributing to collaborative, interdisciplinary research that bridges economics, education, and policy.

Yuemeng Wang

Yuemeng Wang is a doctoral student in Educational Psychology (Special Education) at the University of Connecticut. Prior to this, I earned my MS in educational sciences from KU Leuven in Belgium and my BA in English from Shandong University. My work focuses on equitable Tier 1 PBIS/MTSS implementation and inclusion in general education. I’m also interested in leveraging large language models to enhance teacher preparation and professional development to advance these goals.

Siyuan Chen 

Siyuan Chen is a PhD student in Curriculum and Educational Leadership at William & Mary. Her research focuses on the intersection of teacher education curriculum design and artificial intelligence, with a particular interest in how AI applications can support educator development and school leadership. She is dedicated to shaping future-ready curricula that integrate smart technologies to enhance the teaching and learning experience. Prior to W&M, she earned her MA in TESOL fron USC and BA in English from Shanghai University. With both quantitative and qualitative research background, she looks forward to bridging technology and education in the Meng Lab.

Qilin Zhou

Qilin Zhou is a graduate researcher working at the intersection of machine learning, language technologies, and human-centered AI. She works with the University of Chicago Knowledge Lab and Argonne National Laboratory on developing scalable retrieval-augmented generation systems, tools for interpreting large language models, and document-intelligence methods applied to policy data. Her broader interests focus on how AI systems process and support language development, with applications in early learning, educational assessment, and child-language understanding. She has collaborated with clinicians, educators, and public-sector partners on projects involving language development, trauma-informed assessment, and multilingual information extraction, and she is excited to contribute these perspectives to ongoing work in the Meng Lab.

Joana Aba Riverson

Graduate Research Assistant

Joana Aba Riverson  is a master’s student in Early Childhood Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a Graduate Research Assistant in the Meng Lab. She brings a strong interdisciplinary background informed by psychology and education, with experience working at the intersection of child development, learning, and mental health.

Her interests grow out of hands-on engagement with children and families, particularly around early developmental challenges, disability, and access to supportive learning environments. Joana is especially interested in how early educational experiences intersect with children’s emotional and behavioral development, and how research can better inform early intervention and inclusive practices.

As a member of the Meng Lab, she supports collaborative research projects and is developing skills in applied research that connect developmental theory with real-world educational contexts. Her longer-term goal is to contribute to work that improves early learning experiences for children who are often underserved in educational systems.