2022 Inlight Fellows

I am a third-year PhD student studying psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga campus. Before coming here, I completed my master’s in Applied Behavior Analysis, where I became a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst for people diagnosed with autism. As a doctoral student, I work with Dr. Norman Farb and am now applying my expertise in creating evidence-based interventions to support the mental health of students. At a time when undergraduate stress, burnout, and mental illness are at the forefront of concern, I have conducted seminal work to understand how a person’s cultural context can be used to better support emotional resilience with the goal of helping them flourish in life. In the process of pivoting psychological research into online formats, I have created 7 separate fully online and automated intervention studies. Through this work, I have supported the mental health and academic performance of over 700 college students. I am most proud of my success in learning new and vital skills such as advanced statistical methods and web programming, as well as my success in integrating computer science into psychological research. My current project would leverage these skills to create an inclusive access platform that employs an evidence-based design to help engage students in sharing their emotional highs and lows as co-investigators in developing a map of student mental health at UofT.

My name is Yaxi Zhao, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Information researching technologies for mental healthcare. I aim to understand how and to what extent technologies can support both mental health self-care and healthcare provided by professionals. This is an extension of my psychology research on youth mental health and my background in user experience. A significant number of students are in long-distance relationships and many of them are graduate students in committed relationships. These student couples might have to require remote couples counselling when needed because of the natural distance barrier or situations such as lock-down. My dissertation investigates and designs communication platforms for remote therapy for couples (e.g., postsecondary students). I aim to empower research collaborators from underrepresented groups (e.g., marginalized communities and people with disabilities) to have their voice throughout the research to create inclusive and accessible platforms. So far, I have 8 journal publications and over 10 conference presentations throughout my 9-year research journey. I’m grateful that my dissertation project is supported by SSHRC and the Inlight research fellowship. I’m most proud of my continuous passion, determination, and action for research for social good.

 I am a second-year MA student studying School and Clinical Child Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. My research interests include understanding and improving the experiences of marginalized students seeking mental health services in educational contexts. For my thesis work, I am focusing on the unique support-seeking experiences of racialized university students. My interest in this work stems from my experiences supporting students and seeing the negative impact that mental health concerns have on students’ learning and relationships. Since mental health is essential for learning, I am interested in the ways that educational sites can support student mental health. I am proud of the research that I have done so far in this area and look forward to sharing this work. As a clinician-in-training, I am also interested in community approaches to improving mental health, especially for marginalized students. Therefore, it’s always important to me to support fellow Black students. I’m proud to have done that during my undergraduate degree as the McMaster Black Student Mentorship Program Undergraduate Coordinator and currently as the President of the University of Toronto’s Black Graduate Students’ Association. 

I previously earned my honours Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto, and I am currently pursuing a Masters in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto. My research interests involve supporting interventions and collaborative practices that can improve mental health care delivery and medication management in pharmacy, specifically with post-secondary students. Medication use can be challenging on its own and there is little information about the associated experiences and needs of post-secondary students with psychotropic medication management. Identifying these needs from post-secondary students’ perspective will help determine psychotropic medication management challenges that could be addressed by pharmacists. Personally, pharmacists have helped me navigate the healthcare system and understand medications to help those close to me. I wish I had known this earlier and that is why I hope my study can help fill this gap in mental health resources for students. I hope my research can build a foundational block for programs to help support students with mental health and psychotropic medication management on campus. I’m most proud of my perseverance to pursue this research achieving success with awards such as the U of T Covid-19 Student Engagement Award, Mitacs Training Award and Inlight fellowship while continuing full-time employment and being there for my family. When I am not working on research, I can be almost always be found grabbing coffee, at a concert or cheering on the Leafs!