New year, new lab, new website!
I'm so excited to open the Computational Clinical Science Lab at Yale this summer, and to share my new lab website:
Huge thanks to
@BeyondBCreative
for the brilliant illustrations of my lab's core research directions!
I'm beyond thrilled to share that starting in Fall 2024, I'll be joining the Department of Psychology at Yale University as an Assistant Professor!! This is a literal dream come true, and I can't wait to launch my research lab in such an incredible department
@Yale
!
From my first graduation to my last 💛
Last week, I earned my PhD from
@Harvard
in Clinical Psychology, with a secondary in Computational Science & Engineering. The first in my family to be Dr. Wang!
Next: on to
@Yale
as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology!
I don't normally post about this stuff, but google scholar notified me that I just hit 1,000 citations??? Eeeep! It seems like I just published my first paper yesterday. Feeling so grateful for all my mentors/collaborators and excited for what's to come 🥰
Being 29 in academia means that in the past 5 weeks I've gotten engaged, been to 3 weddings, 2 conferences, graduated, given 3 talks, & taught a stats course 😅
(all this to say...sorry if i didn't respond to your email yet! and i promise all editors to have reviews in soon 😂)
It's been a hard few weeks, with rising anti-Asian violence and many folks still denying the reality of anti-Asian racism. Some thoughts on this Sunday afternoon...1) We must fight anti-Asian racism without fueling anti-Blackness (calls for increased policing are unacceptable).
The idea that POC are taking all the academic jobs from White people is seriously laughable. So many departments or subareas have 90 - 100% White faculty (looking @ you clinical psych 👀👀)...like what??
Woke up to the biggest surprise in my inbox today!! So honored to be on the
@Forbes
30 under 30 list in Healthcare, and incredibly grateful to everyone who has supported me all these years 🥹
Website official! 🎉
Now also seems like a good time to share that I'll be reviewing apps for the Clinical Psychology PhD program
@YalePsychology
this year, and hiring a lab manager (lab website with more info coming soon). Please help spread the word!
Exciting news!! After 4 years, I'm so thrilled to share a preprint of our paper on building a formal mathematical and computational model of suicide.
This is the hardest I've ever worked on a paper, and it's some of the work I'm most proud of to date!
If you are a clinical psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker, or interact with patients in any other capacity, you must be ready to address racism if and when patients/clients bring it up. Refusal to address racism and/or ignoring it when brought up is actively causing harm.
Dissertation defended!! A huge thank-you to my incredible advisor
@mk_nock
and amazing committee members: Kate McLaughlin,
@gershbrain
, and
@aidangcw
!
The best part was getting to do it in a room (in person & zoom!) filled with so much love and joy, with friends and family 💞
Words can't describe how excited I am that my NIMH F31/NRSA is officially funded!!!
This is truly a dream project for me and I can't wait to spend the next few years diving into this work even more deeply 🥰
White male methods aggression, hostility, and gatekeeping in psychology are very real reasons why few women - particularly women of color - feel comfortable in stats/methods/computational settings. This space is dominated by a select few voices for a reason, and I'm tired of it.
Not even 24 hours later and the gaslighting and denying of anti-Asian racism is already flooding in. This is the reality of being Asian in America. Never belonging, never fully American, and even when the racism is so blindingly obvious - people are so quick to ignore and deny.
Absolutely thrilled to share that I matched at MGH for internship! I can’t wait to work with the amazing folks
@MGHPrecisionPsy
@MGHCDMH
, am I’m endlessly grateful for all the support from mentors & friends throughout this journey 🥰
Thrilled to share our new paper published today in
@JAMANetworkOpen
! We tried to tackle the problem of predicting suicide attempts after psychiatric hospitalization, using EMA data collected *during* hospitalization. Thread w/ some highlights below!
HUGE news for VA internships -- a 27% (!) increase in stipend for this upcoming year! So glad to see this news, and an increase for postdoc salaries too 🎉🎉
When your freshman year roommate and her friends - who gave you the gently racist and ~highly creative~ nickname "wonton" so that they could gossip about you behind your back - start posting about
#StopAsianHate
. What a time to be alive! 🥴🥲
Normalize listening to Asian & Asian American women when we talk about our experiences with racism and sexism, including (and especially) in the lab/university. The amount of gaslighting is unreal.
I'm hiring a full-time lab manager/research coordinator to start in summer 2024! Come join me as a founding member of the Computational Clinical Science Lab at Yale!
For more information about the position & how to apply:
Please RT & share widely!
Reminds me of another famous quote by Tom Insel on how NIH’s near-singular focus on neuroscience & genetics of mental disorders hasn’t moved the needle on mental health. Yet 5 years later, NIH still values brain > behavior. What will it take to see change in funding priorities?
What could NIH have done differently during the pandemic?
Dr. Francis Collins to
@JudyWoodruff
: "Maybe we underinvested in research on human behavior. I never imagined a year ago ... that we would still have 60 million people" not get vaccinated.
So excited to share my first solo-authored paper! 🥳
Machine learning methods are rapidly gaining interest in eating disorders research, so this article aims to provide a brief intro + highlight some key challenges for responsible ML application in EDs.
Does anyone else find it weird that the MINI screener for anorexia nervosa is BMI ≤ 17.0? This (1) misses many people struggling w/ restrictive eating, (2) misses chance for data collection on restriction in SO many studies, and (3) perpetuates harmful message that AN=low weight
We suffer racism, oppression, and violence, AND we have benefitted from proximity to Whiteness. The racism we face is nothing like the racism faced by Black folks. We must also work to dismantle the anti-Blackness that exists in our own communities.
Exciting news after 3 months of waiting...5%!!!
My heart nearly stopped when I saw my score was posted, and then again when I momentarily forgot how NIH scores worked and had to remind myself that lower is better 😅
Talk by
@ShirleyBWang
#apschi22
on reasons why suicide rates haven’t decreased & treatment efficacy hasn’t increased in 60 years, despite increases in studies, papers, & funds: a mismatch between theory (what we know about the topic) and methods we use to interrogate the topic.
My lab will integrate methods from across the clinical & computational sciences to advance the understanding, prediction, and prevention of suicide, nonsuicidal self-injury, and eating disorders.
More about me and my work:
Dissertation prospectus passed! Thank you to my amazing committee
@mk_nock
@gershbrain
and Kate Mclaughlin 🤗
Now I’m officially ABDAAIBIICP (All But Dissertation And Also Internship Because I’m In Clinical Psychology)🥳
Does anyone else hate making descriptives tables and writing out M (SD) for all your variables in a paper? Out of laziness I wrote a function to do it for you (using describe() from the psych package)...screenshot here for anyone who is impatient like me 😂
My heart is BURSTING with pride for my partner, the now *DR.* Ruben van Genugten! What a special week -- filled with excellent science and surrounded by so much love from family & friends 🥰 Also, the first in-person
@PsychHarvard
defense since COVID!
I'm honored to receive the Emerson Award
@MGHPsychiatry
, and had a great time presenting my work at grand rounds last week! It was so special to be introduced by my phd & internship mentors
@mk_nock
@jorsmo
, alongside an amazing team
@karmelchoi
@drkatebentley
& Kendra Becker 💛
Interested in using R but nervous/wary/unsure about how to get started? I've been there! Join me in this *free* two-part webinar for an introduction to R 🤗
We'll cover all the basics from R objects, operations, importing & wrangling data, visualizing data, and analyzing data!
Now that I've had a few months to process things (and finish my diss!), I wanted to take some time to share my experiences, thoughts, and reflections on the job market + internship process!
BUCKLE UP because this is going to be a looonggg thread 🧵(1/n)
Being on the job market and applying to internship at the same time was a WILD journey! I have many thoughts and reflections, but will save those for another thread at a later time :)
I'm happy to chat with others considering similar paths and can't wait to pay it forward!
Are you a memory researcher? I'm not 😅 but my partner is, and he just developed a model for automatically scoring the Autobiographical Interview (AI) using natural language processing! Check it out:
(he's not on twitter but this work is SO COOL I had to brag about it anyway 🥳)
My biggest gripe with outlook is when you hit reply to your own email (because you have a follow up thought or made a mistake in the first email), it auto-populates a reply to YOURSELF. Why, in an email chain, would I want to email myself?? 😭
BREAKING: The U.S. Supreme Court rules colleges and universities must stop considering race in admissions, putting an end to affirmative action in higher education.
So many tweets about massive spike in clin psy apps...amazing effect of ⬇️barriers & ⬆️access! But I bet this info is also super stressful for applicants. Remember to breathe, take a twitter break if needed, & CELEBRATE submitting! Truly a huge milestone regardless of outcome🎉💫
As a member of their associate editorial board, I feel like Behavior Research and Therapy really missed an opportunity for promoting the journal during this brat summer
I've heard from many mentees that they're having a hard time finding faculty in suicide research taking students this year. To help out, if you're reviewing apps this year and study SITBs (or open to mentoring students w/ SITB interests), could you reply below?
Pls RT for reach!
A genuine question: how can we in clinical psychology build/promote open science methods in an inclusive, welcoming way? On the whole, we've lagged behind social/cog/dev subfields, and I see OS methods as being sorely needed in clinical (esp. prereg and recognizing QRPs).
I am elated to share that I have been accepted as a graduate student into the Clinical Psychology PhD program at Yale University
@yalegsas
! I will be studying under the magnificent
@ShirleyBWang
. I can’t wait for the fall!
The shooting of Daunte Wright, w/ Derek Chauvin's trial literally ongoing, a month after Atlanta shootings, w/ constant news of Asians being attacked...my heart is heavy. I'm tired and angry. Sending all the love to my Black & Asian friends & fam.
#blacklivesmatter
#stopasianhate
We're back for round 2! I'm thrilled to announce Harvard's second annual PPREP 🥳 A FREE 2-day workshop for folks from historically minoritized groups applying to PhD, lab manager, & RA positions in psychology.
Visit our website for more info & to apply!
This seems like a good time to remember that passive enabling of bad behavior, abuse, harassment, etc. is just as bad. When those in positions of power continue to collaborate with and support bad actors, this only intensifies the gaslighting experienced by those who are harmed.
Just created an AAPI account so I think this is really happening!
Starting the internship application process feels SO overwhelming and scary. Fingers crossed and if anyone has any favorite resources/guides/advice, I'd welcome any & all of it 😅
No better way to celebrate submitting our
#APPIC
apps (YAY!!) than by eating our body weight in hot pot 😋
@MaddyFrumkin
Huge sigh of relief and so grateful for all the support of friends & mentors along the way!
Wow. Such enormous & unacceptable disparities for Indigenous, Black, & Latinx scientists. We need real system-level change.
Also, I hate this Asian/White lumping. Falls into the model minority myth, ignores diversity in Asian groups, and erases anti-Asian racism we know exists.
Exactly one year ago, I packed up from lab (i.e. grabbed my desktop monitor) and settled into WFH for what I thought would be a few months. Fast forward a year...today I got the 2nd dose of the COVID vaccine! It's been a hard & terrible year, but today I'm feeling extra grateful.
Anyone else feeling skeptical of this maskless indoors situation??? I can't shake the feeling that it has more to do with vaccine incentives than COVID risk indoors...and just remembering how public health officials urged folks to *not* wear masks at the start of the pandemic 🙃
After extensive consideration* I have decided we need more BIPOC in computational psychiatry. Also more women. Ideally, more women of color. We need to change the culture and create a more welcoming & inclusive environment. TY for coming to my TED talk 💫
Working between clinical psychology, applied math, statistics, and computer science, I've thought a LOT about the R vs. Python debate.
There is clearly a winner! Let me explain...
THREAD 🧵 (1/25)
YESSSSS!!!!! I am SO HAPPY ❤️🥰🎉 not only that I can finally sleep tonight and close the 15 NYT tabs open on my computer but that WE ELECTED KAMALA HARRIS TO VP, THE DAUGHTER OF IMMIGRANTS AND FIRST WOMAN AND BLACK AND ASIAN VICE PRESIDENT!!
I’ve noticed that the eating disorders field tends to get VERY vocal and upset whenever there’s an all-male panel and I’d love for that same energy to be used in calling out all-white panels, symposia, webinars, & groups.
Only including white women is NOT the solution.
🚨 We're hiring!! 🚨
@YalePsychology
is searching for a new Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology! Review begins on October 1, 2024.
Job ad for more details:
Please apply & share widely!
Now that it's official, I'm absolutely thrilled to share that my partner
@rubenvgenugten
(who also finally joined twitter 🥳) will be joining the Institute for Experiential Artificial Intelligence at Northeastern University as a Research Scientist!
2) It is hard to exist in a space where people can't agree that racism is a problem that should be urgently addressed - where they don't see any issue with calling us "yellow" and making fun of accents. Speaking up in these situations is hard but powerful, and it makes a huge
I wish there was a *pause* button for research sometimes. Like I just want to sit here and take ALL the interesting (but very time consuming) classes and read ALL the important papers...I'll come back to publish something once I feel like I've learned enough things 👩🏻💻📚
After 4 years and 6 math + CS classes, today I finally finished the *last* class for my secondary in Computational Science & Engineering!!
What a WHIRLWIND journey -- I'm so grateful for this training and the ability to use these mathematical & computational methods in my work.
Are you interested in studying suicide? There's a clear & urgent need for more research, but many barriers (esp with adolescents).
On July 15,
@KathrynFoxR
and I are teaching a workshop on ethics, risk assessment, safety planning, & working with IRB:
I get so aggravated by the affect misattribution procedure. Like who decided Chinese characters are all totally "neutral" or "ambiguous"? Of all symbols you could use, WHY would you settle on a language spoken by over 1 billion people worldwide, including millions in the US??
Wow. You know what might have a "potential chilling effect" on our confidence in the reporting process at Harvard? When 40 professors - in the face of uncertainty - decide to side with the abuser over the victims in public. Imagine what they must feel comfortable with in private.
(6/7) “... because they may have a potential chilling effect on our community members’ confidence in the investigatory process and their ability to access counseling and other resources.”
Nope. This model minority BS perpetuates anti-Black racism, erases the diversity of Asian experiences AND delegitimizes anti-Asian racism, and prevents solidarity between our communities. Disappointed to see this rhetoric and committed to fighting against it.
Asians are successful because our cultures tend to value family and education.
It's not because white people treat us better as pet minorities or some other garbage.
It's freaking ridiculous that I even need to explain this.
difference when those with more privilege also call out problematic behavior so the burden is not always on the minoritized. I am grateful to my friends and colleagues who have done so recently.
I’m incredibly excited to share that I will be pursuing a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at
@YalePsychology
working with the incredible
@ShirleyBWang
!! I can’t wait to join the CCS lab to study complex and dynamic processes underlying self-injurious behaviors.
When you take a mathematical modeling class and convince your group members to focus on eating disorders for a project! Nowhere near ready for anything, but always exciting to merge my math & psych worlds and fun to see what can be done in just a few hours 🥰
Feeling so grateful for everyone who reached out on twitter and offline❤️ Amidst all the hate and ugliness of trolls was so much love from so many friends! And in the wise words of
@kareem_carr
, we win when we don't let them change what we stand for or how we live our lives.
This is horrifying 😳 I wonder how many papers in psych have errors due to data cleaning by hand in excel...copy/paste mistakes, accidental deletions, etc
A third of all genetics papers published in Nature over a decade (and 20% across all journals) had errors due to the fact that many gene have names like SEPT2 (the official name of Septin 2), which were automatically coded as dates by Microsoft Excel.
Just got my covid booster yesterday and I was *dreading* it because I usually have terrible side effects, but I ended up being totally fine this year. Pleasantly surprised!
Anyway, this is a 📢 PSA 📢 that covid still exists, and please get your booster!!
Being on the job market and applying to internship at the same time was a WILD journey! I have many thoughts and reflections, but will save those for another thread at a later time :)
I'm happy to chat with others considering similar paths and can't wait to pay it forward!
🚨 Call for papers at Clinical Psychological Science!
I'm so excited to co-edit this special issue with
@JnfrLTackett
@ajshackman
on multidisciplinary clinical psych science. Empirical, simulation, & conceptual papers all welcome!
Abstracts due April 1, 2024. Please share & RT!
Special Issue Call: Bridge-building, innovating, interdisciplinary clinical scientists! Open to empirical and perspectives contributions. April 1 deadline. We are looking for true scientific cross-talk w
@ShirleyBWang
@ajshackman
For any undergrad or postbac BIPOC applying to PhD programs in clinical psychology, I will talk to you, share my materials, and look over your materials! Also happy to do the same for NSF GRFP applicants. Please DM me or email (shirleywang
@g
.harvard.edu)!
Let's investigate why many ethnic and racial minorities are not seeking help. And then let's investigate why there are so few ethnic and racial minorities in the field of eating disorders in general...
What a weekend! Between helping to host
@PsychHarvard
’s second annual PPREP and attending our first ever wedding (I love love!!) my heart is so full ❤️
I'm excited to give a talk at MIT tomorrow! I'll be presenting on EMA, machine learning, & math modeling to advance our understanding, prediction, and prevention of suicide. (also excited to visit MIT for the first time...after 7 years in Cambridge!)
Writing a solo author paper was hard but apparently responding to reviews is even *harder*! Without co-authors to check in/commiserate with...is the reviewer right?? Do any of my arguments make sense? Are these examples helpful? Is the sky even blue? Who really knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
📢 Call for submissions is OPEN for the 2023 Society for Digital Mental Health Conference!
I'm excited to be on the planning committee - we have a great lineup of keynote, panels, & Ask Me Anything (AMA Reddit-style) events w/ experts. Join us June 20-21!
Excited but somewhat distressed to learn that I will be presenting 4 talks at
@PsychScience
🥲
hmu if you'll be there too and let's meet up for ☕️ (pre-talks) or 🍻🕺🏽(post-talks)!!
Studies examining effects of COVID on mental health (eg eating disorders) should at the VERY LEAST measure & report race & ethnicity, if not test as a predictor/moderator. We can't ignore that this pandemic has disproportionately affected Black, Indigenous, & Latinx communities.
Tried explaining the tenure process to my mom yesterday, who was SO confused when I said it normally takes 6-8 years. Eventually I spelled out the word "tenure" which solved the problem...she thought it was called "ten-year" 😂
today my partner and i browsed a bookstore
@HarvardBooks
for the first time in over a YEAR, spent too much money on too many books, and sat outside reading for hours w/ a beer...i could literally not imagine a more perfect day🥰
So excited to share this work w/
@HaynosAF
@KathrynFoxR
@BoccagnoChelsea
@mk_nock
Jill Hooley & Patrick Mair!
TLDR: Across 3 studies varying in age, dx, & illness stage, we find restrictive eating is largely maintained by automatic positive reinforcement.
Deeply disappointing to see so much unacceptable behavior, from condescension & intimidation to gaslighting & bigotry disguised as allyship. Folks in power do this to minoritized trainees regularly - often in private w/o witnesses - so what's striking is that it's now on display.
Re: the Barlow-related twitter harassment. A response from the chair at BU is below. Powerful people will protect powerful people, and will offer weird "advice" as a way to intimidate others. (Note that I never accused anyone of a FERPA violation.)
this
#COVID19
is really exposing people's true racist beliefs. lost track of how many people i unfriended on facebook today after seeing some truly wild posts and opinions...so much anti-asian and anti-chinese prejudice that people feel so comfortable openly expressing :/
I can't stop thinking about how Ethan Crumbley was literally caught searching for ammunition, drawing pictures of shootings, and only had to meet w/ school officials & counselor - while police regularly arrest & terrorize Black school children for absolutely no reason. Sickening.
I'm taking a *hard* (for me) math class this semester, and last week I panic-cried because the pset felt so overwhelming/impossible to finish on time. This week, I worked through all the pset problems easily and understood everything! Taking time to celebrate the small wins 🥰
I'm taking a CS course based entirely in Python this semester and feel SO clumsy after doing HW0. Posting this as a reminder that 1) I also felt this way when first learning R, 2) comfort comes with practice and many mistakes, and 3)
#girlscancode
& it's never too late to start!
3) Self-care doesn't always look the same and that's OK! Last week, my self-care was spending 5 hours watching Netflix and working on a jigsaw puzzle. Today, it's burying myself in my math pset with a large mug of tea and a soy candle that smells fabulous. This makes me feel