Lab Members – STAR Lab

Meet the Lab!

Deena Skolnick Weisberg is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Villanova University. In addition to directing the STAR Lab, she is a co-founder and senior advisor of the Galapagos Education and Research Alliance (GERA). She earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University and received postdoctoral training at Rutgers University and at Temple University. Her research interests include imaginative cognition, scientific reasoning, and the intersection between them. Her work has been published in a variety of scholarly journals, including Science and Cognition, and has received funding from the Templeton Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Learn more about Dr. Weisberg here.

Graduate Students

Rayan Magon was a Pearson Scholar at the University of Toronto, where she majored in Psychology and Philosophy. Her research interests began in high school when developing a storytelling game aimed at reducing implicit gender biases, inspiring her long-standing focus on imagination in human development. Her academic interests include creativity, causal reasoning, Mental Time Travel, risk and resilience, autistic social cognition, and awe and curiosity in learning. Rayan aspires to become a Creativity Researcher in School Psychology, applying cognitive developmental theory to enhance educational practices that foster creativity, resilience, and academic success in all students. In her free time, she enjoys reading philosophy, dancing, making music, and singing.

Natalie Kita graduated from Saint Peter’s University in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and English. She is broadly interested in the aspects of media that are most impactful to information processing and decision making. Currently, she is working to identify factors in climate literature that motivate readers to observe environmentally conscious behaviors. In her free time, she enjoys spending time in nature, experiencing new cultures, and cooking for her loved ones.

Nick Ashenfelter graduated summa cum laude from St. Mary’s College in Maryland in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology. He’s fascinated by sex—or rather, people that aren’t having it—and plans to use the experience he gains at Villanova and the STAR Lab to complete research as a social psychologist. In his free time he enjoys feminist horror, board and card games, and thrifting.