Graduate Students

PhD Student (Developmental Psychology and Education)

darshan.panesar@mail.utoronto.ca | ResearchGate

Darshan received his H.B.Sc. degree in biology and cognitive psychology and his M.Ed. in Developmental Psychology and Education from the University of Toronto. His research interests are centered around early-childhood neuro-cognitive and physiological development. Notably, his past research has examined cognition, language development and face perception in infants aged 6-12 months, through the use of a wide range of methodologies such as; Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (FNIRS), Eyetracking, physiological measures, and Transdermal Optical Imaging. Currently, Darshan’s research focus is centered around how sleep affects different facets of early childhood development, such as emotional, physical, and cognitive trajectories.

PhD Candidate (Developmental Psychology and Education)

wenjin.sun@mail.utoronto.ca | Google Scholar | ResearchGate

Wenjin Sun holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Psychology from Shandong Normal University and a Master of Education from Hangzhou Normal University. During her graduate studies, she extensively examined contextual factors—such as praise, environmental cues, and emotional states—that impact children's propensity to engage in cheating behavior. Her master's thesis focused on elucidating the influence of various cognitive factors, including intelligence, on children's ethical decision-making. Her current research pursuits encompass several dimensions:1) Investigating the multifaceted factors affecting children's cheating behavior, including but not limited to intelligence, theory of mind, executive function, personality traits, and moral judgement. 2) Exploring the intricate interplay between children's sense of power and their inclination towards cheating behavior. 3) Examining the correlation between children's prosocial behavior and their sense of power. Currently there are 5 research assistants in Wenjin’s team. Two are graduate students, from the University of Toronto and Columbia University, and three are undergraduate students, from McGill University.

PhD Student; Academic Integrity Team Lead

kanza.batool@utoronto.ca | ResearchGate

Kanza received her BSc in mental health studies from the University of Toronto and a post-graduate certificate in addictions and mental health studies from Humber College. She is currently pursuing her Master of Education in Developmental Psychology and Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Her current research interests are focused on early childhood development and the factors that contribute to academic rule-breaking within young children.

Lab Manager; PhD Student

liyuzhi.dong@mail.utoronto.ca | ResearchGate

Dolly completed her BSc in Psychology and Statistical Science from University of Toronto. She is also a MA DPE student under Dr. Lee's supervision and her research interests are understanding children's cheating behaviours from the persecptive of failure/success experience.

PhD Candidate (Developmental Psychology and Education)

jj.peng@mail.utoronto.ca | ResearchGate | CV

Junjie received a Bachelor of Science degree from Tianhua College of Shanghai Normal University and a Master of Science degree in Applied Psychology from Hangzhou Normal University. During his graduate studies, he and his supervisor, Dr. Li Zhao, explored the factors that influence cheating behavior in preschool, middle school, and college students, such as persistence, test difficulty, moral reminders, and the consequences of cheating. In his master's thesis, he developed a questionnaire and a behavioral paradigm to measure preschoolers' persistence to success, exploring the relation between persistence and preschoolers' cheating behavior. His current research interests include 1) development of scales to assess children's trait persistence and situational persistence; 2) the relation between children's persistence and immoral behavior.

PhD Student (Developmental Psychology & Education)

cali.brake@mail.utoronto.ca 

Cali received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a Research Intensive Specialization from the University of Waterloo, and her Master of Arts in Developmental Psychology & Education from the University of Toronto. Her master's research focused on moral judgments of plagiarism and whether those judgements change when the source of the plagiarized material was human or AI. Her doctoral research is examining how children learn about, morally evaluate, and engage in acts of stealing.

PhD Student (Developmental Psychology and Education)

Jinkongjia.zhang@mail.utoronto.ca

Mia is a PhD student in Developmental Psychology and Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. 

She has an interdisciplinary background in physics, psychology, and artificial intelligence. Before joining the Kang Lee Development Lab, she worked on research projects applying large language models and machine learning to psychology and education. Her doctoral research examines how large language models understand children's thinking and social reasoning, with a particular interest in Theory of Mind, emotion, and metacognition, and how developmental psychology can inform the design of more human-centered AI systems.

PhD Student (Developmental Psychology & Education)

henry.tan@mail.utoronto.ca 

Haotian received his B.A. in Psychology, with minors in Economics and Behavioural Science, from McGill University, and earned his Master of Industrial Relations and Human Resources from the University of Toronto. His past research has examined children’s cheating and prosocial behaviour, moral development, sense of power, and mental health. More recently, his research has focused on personality development across childhood and adolescence and its associations with behavioural outcomes and family dynamics. Alongside his academic research, he leads the development and implementation of AI-powered tools, overseeing projects from early-stage conceptualization and product design through implementation and commercial deployment. His work focuses on transforming research insights and emerging AI technologies into scalable solutions across educational, organizational, and commercial settings.

PhD Student (Developmental Psychology and Education)

Xinyi is a PhD student in Developmental Psychology at OISE, University of Toronto, focusing on moral development. She completed her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Psychology at Hangzhou Normal University.

Her research focuses on academic dishonesty. During her Master’s program, she utilized meta-analyses to examine the factors influencing the relationship between academic motivation and academic cheating behavior, while her Master’s thesis examined how social information affects cheating in preschoolers. In her PhD, Xinyi will continue her work in children's development.