Our Team

Paula M. Niedenthal

Paula received her PhD from the University of Michigan and was on the faculty of the departments of psychology at Johns Hopkins University and Indiana University. Paula was a member of the National Centre for Scientific Research in France for more than a decade and is now the Howard Leventhal Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her areas of research include representational models of emotion, the social functions of emotion expression, socio-ecological shapers of emotion culture, and the physiological basis of social tolerance. Paula is past president of the Society for Affective Science (SAS) and is lead author of Psychology of Emotion (2017). In her free time she enjoys her many pets, including Rudi the miniature pig, all winter and summer sports, and travel. niedenthal@wisc.edu 

Paula’s CV

Paula’s blog Cliche Busters

postdoctoral and graduate students

Y. Ivette Colón

Ivette is a fourth-year psychology PhD student at UW. Broadly speaking, they are interested in the neural and computational mechanisms that support the perception of familiar people, objects, and concepts in both humans and computers. Before becoming affiliated with the Niedenthal Emotions lab and joining Dr. Emily Ward’s Visual Cognition lab, they worked in Dr. Alice O’Toole’s Face Perception lab at The University of Texas at Dallas, studying the representations that emerge from deep convolutional neural networks trained for face recognition. ycolon@wisc.edu

Michelle Marji

Michelle is a fourth-year PhD student with a focus in computational social science. She studies the intersections between identity, emotion, and social interaction. She investigates these topics by modeling human movement through space, analyzing the effects of synchronous movement and belonging, and conducting naturalistic studies. She uses similar methods to investigate human-robot interaction. Michelle's research is grounded in collaboration with social scientists, computer scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, geographers, artists, and community members. Outside of the lab, Michelle is a dance artist. michelle.marji@wisc.edu

Sophie Wohtjen

Sophie is a second-year postdoctoral fellow with a PhD in Psychology from Dartmouth College. Her research aims to understand how nonverbal behaviors such as eye contact and facial expression can connect two people during social interaction. Her areas of expertise include eye-tracking and naturalistic experimental design, and she implements a variety of computational tools in order to effectively understand and model the dynamics of social interaction as they naturally unfold in time. wohltjen@wisc.edu

undergrad research assistants

AURELIA Dae Rutkowski

Aurelia is a sophomore from Jefferson, Wisconsin majoring in biochemistry, psychology, and neuroscience. She is interested in social functions of emotions, especially within nonverbal communication. After graduation, she plans to attend medical school and will specialize in psychiatry. Outside of the lab, she enjoys swimming, camping, and cooking new foods.

Elijah Lin

Elijah (they/them) is a senior from Madison, WI, majoring in Educational Policy Studies and Psychology, with a certificate in Gender & Women Studies. Elijah is interested in understanding how social interactions influence emotional processes, as well as how minorities experience belongingness across space and place. After graduation, they plan to pursue a PhD program in Education or Social Psychology. Outside of the lab, Elijah hangs out with friends and is a student advocate for the Associated Students of Madison.

Heidi Grijnsztein

Heidi (she/her) is from Sacramento, California. She is in the class of 2026 and is planning to graduate with a degree in Psychology and a certificate in Disability Rights and Services. While post-graduation is a few years away, she hopes to pursue an advanced degree to become a therapist. Outside of psychology, she enjoys music, thrift shopping, and video production. 

Lab manager

lab alumni