2022 Inlight Fellows

Yiyi is a third-year PhD student studying psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga campus. Before coming here, Yiyi completed her master’s in Applied Behavior Analysis, where she became a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst for people diagnosed with autism. As a doctoral student, Yiyi works with Dr. Norman Farb and am now applying her 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, Yiyi has 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, Yiyi has created 7 separate fully online and automated intervention studies. Through this work, Yiyi has supported the mental health and academic performance of over 700 college students. Yiyi is most proud of her success in learning new and vital skills such as advanced statistical methods and web programming, as well as her success in integrating computer science into psychological research. Yiyi’s 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.

Maya is a second-year Master’s student in the Clinical Psychology Program at the University of Toronto Scarborough. In this program, Maya has been afforded the opportunity to conduct impactful research that focuses on the influence of stigma on mental health and well-being in diverse groups of individuals. Maya’s Master’s thesis explores the existence of borderline personality disorder (BPD) stigma in the general population using a vignette-based study. This area of research has opened my eyes to the importance of including people with lived experience in all stages of the research process, and Maya has been fortunate enough to work with three adults with lived experience of BPD in various projects to date.

Maya has always had an interest in leading student mental health research. During her undergraduate degree, Maya was involved in various projects exploring postsecondary students’ stress levels, as well as their sleep and eating habits. However, leading student mental health research in her graduate studies became a particular commitment of mine when it became readily apparent how many LGBTQ+ students experience elevated levels of internalized stigma that compound into increased shame and mental health difficulties. Accordingly, through this research project supported by Inlight Student Mental Health Research Initiative, Maya hopes to provide crucial evidence for a potential way in which one’s environment and surroundings on campus can curtail internalized stigma and enhance LGBTQ+ students’ psychological well-being. 

Yaxi Zhao is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Information researching technologies for mental healthcare. Yaxi aims 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 her psychology research on youth mental health and her 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. Yaxi’s dissertation investigates and designs communication platforms for remote therapy for couples (e.g., postsecondary students). Yaxi aims 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, Yaxi has 8 journal publications and over 10 conference presentations throughout her 9-year research journey. Yaxi is grateful that her dissertation project is supported by SSHRC and the Inlight research fellowship. Yaxi is most proud of her continuous passion, determination, and action for research for social good.

Sunny (Xue) Xiang is a second-year PhD student in Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Prior to starting her PhD, Sunny obtained her Bachelor of Commerce at Rotman Commerce, University of Toronto, with a specialist in management and a major in psychology. Upon graduation, Sunny received the Rotman Commerce Director’s Award for Academic Excellence (awarded to the top 1% of the graduating class). 

Currently, Sunny is pursuing two lines of research related to student mental health. We have witnessed an eruption of student mental health issues over the past few years and post-secondary institutions responded by providing more mental health assistance to students. However, the move towards an open conversation about mental health still faces obstacles due to the associated stigma and the existing competitive culture that might be incompatible with the openness and vulnerability the conversation requires. How to facilitate such culture change is thus a critical question. Sunny’s second line of research examines the identity transition and suspension students experience when performing or not performing certain social roles (e.g., as a student, member of their household…). Specifically, Sunny is interested in if and how performing activities in their liminal space, a space where all their social roles are suspended, can facilitate their recovery and well-being. The thing Sunny is most proud of is how she always approaches her research from the lens of diversity, culture and inclusion.

 Rya Buckley is second-year MA student studying School and Clinical Child Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Rya’s research interests include understanding and improving the experiences of marginalized students seeking mental health services in educational contexts. For Rya’s thesis work, she is focusing on the unique support-seeking experiences of racialized university students. Rya’s interest in this work stems from her 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, Rya is interested in the ways that educational sites can support student mental health. Rya is proud of the research that she has done so far in this area and looks forward to sharing this work. As a clinician-in-training, Rya is also interested in community approaches to improving mental health, especially for marginalized students. Therefore, it’s always important to her to support fellow Black students. Rya is proud to have done that during her 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. 

In 2014 I became a certified yoga instructor. This process sparked a deep curiousity about how contemplative practices support transformative learning, self-discovery, and wellbeing. My curiosity eventually brought me to the University of Toronto and in 2018 I had the good fortune to begin working in the Division of Student Life where I now oversee the Mindfulness, Meditation and Yoga programming portfolio at the Multi-Faith Centre. This year these programs will see approximately 5000 student visits in lectures, workshops, and experiential learning. Through my work I meet students from across the St. George campus who generously share their experiences with me. Their stories inspire my ongoing narrative research and education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). My research on student wellbeing in higher education is also informed by the wise and wonderful students I have the pleasure of training and mentoring. I am currently a PhD Candidate at OISE in the department of Curriculum, Learning and Teaching. In 2020 I received a Master of Education in Leadership, Higher, and Adult Education from OISE. I also hold a Bachelor of Education from Brock University and an Honours Bachelor of Arts from McMaster University. But most importantly I am a mom, a daughter, a wife, a sister, and a very proud auntie to three wonderful nephews and a niece who can’t wait to call me Dr. Brown. Their encouragement has made my successful return to higher education possible.

Andrea previously earned her honours Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto, and she is currently pursuing a Masters in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto. Andrea’s 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. Pharmacists have helped Andrea navigate the healthcare system and understand medications to help those close to her. Andrea wishes she had known this earlier and that is why she hopes her study can help fill this gap in mental health resources for students. Andrea hopes her research can build a foundational block for programs to help support students with mental health and psychotropic medication management on campus. Andrea is most proud of her 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 her family. When Andrea is not working on research, Andrea can be almost always be found grabbing coffee, at a concert or cheering on the Leafs!