April Chi Jiun Su

April Chi Jiun Su is a first-generation student who graduated cum laude from Williams College in 2023 with a B.A. in Psychology (honors) and East Asian Language and Culture with a concentration in Neuroscience. During her undergraduate career, she conducted research in Dr. Catherine B. Stroud’s psychopathology lab, Dr. Victor A. Cazares' behavioral neuroscience lab, and Dr. Laurie Heatherington’s psychotherapy lab. Under the guidance of Dr. Stroud, her honors thesis investigated how early adversity alters individuals’ HPA axis functioning to confer risk for the development of internalizing symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, her independent project with Dr. Stroud investigated the moderating role of depression history in the prospective association between the across-wave Latent Trait Cortisol (LTC) and co-rumination in emerging adults. In Dr. Cazares' lab, she investigated the Partial Reinforcement Extinction Effect (PREE) in fear learning in mice as a model for the etiology of anxiety-related disorders. In Dr. Heatherington’s lab, she investigated race and gender-matching preferences in psychotherapy and asylee perspectives on psychotherapies for post-traumatic stress.

She was the 2023 recipient of the Chuzi-Ianniello Prize in Psychology, which is selected and nominated by the Psychology faculty to a student who has demonstrated exceptional achievement in research and contributed meaningfully to the intellectual community at Williams College. April has presented at the Society for Neuroscience Conference in 2022 and the Pavlovian Society Annual Meeting in 2022. She was elected to Associate Membership in Sigma Xi and has received institutional grants including the Allison Davis Research Fellowship, the Sentinels Summer Public Policy Research Fellowship, and the Class of 1960s Scholar in Psychology.

Within the Stress and Development Lab, she aims to investigate the specific neurobiological mechanisms underlying various cognitive-affective processes. Specifically, she is interested in typical brain development and how early adversity and genetic factors can alter the neurobiological mechanisms underlying emotional development to increase the risk for adverse health outcomes. She is drawn to this line of research because, by understanding these processes, we can accurately identify individuals at risk for psychopathology and the specific mechanisms of change they can benefit from during prevention efforts. In addition, there remain gaps in our understanding of the impact of culture and how these pathways may differ for minorized populations. April’s overarching goal is to shift the current paradigm in the field of psychology away from the primary use of WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) samples and toward the integration of diverse voices to improve our understanding of the stressors that contribute to health disparities among minorized populations.

Thus, in the future, she intends to attain a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and secure a professorship to investigate risk and resilience at the level of specific cognitive-affective processes and their underlying neural networks. She aims to explore these interests through a multi-modal approach that incorporates neuroimaging and psychophysiological experiments in immigrant and ethnic minority populations to shed light on the unique experiences of historically underserved communities. Concurrently, through her professorship, she aims to facilitate educational pathways for underrepresented individuals and promote access to higher education.

Outside of the lab, April enjoys eating while watching documentaries, thrifting for clothes and glassware, and cooking nutritional recipes with different kitchen appliances.