Francesca Penza
PhD Student & Research Assistant
Supervisors
Professor Emily Jones (Birkbeck, University of London)
Professor Sam Wass (University of East London)
Research Interests
My research interest is to understand what drives individual differences in children’s behaviours and cognitive skills that lead to different developmental trajectories, such as learning differences and neurodivergent outcomes. My research, particularly, focuses on studying how children in the first few years of life develop self-regulation skills and identifying how individual differences in self-control’s behaviours relate to later education, cognitive and mental health outcomes later in childhood. During my PhD, I will use multimodal methodologies such as eye-tracking, EEG, physiological data, fNIRS and longitudinal statistical modelling.
Employment
2024 – 2026 Research Assistant, Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development
Supervised by Dr Maheen Siddiqui
2023 - 2024 Research Assistant, Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development
I have worked on several projects at the BONDS lab (BONDS, Early life Cohort study, Baby Steps and STREAM project) supervised by Professor Emily Jones
2018 – 2020 Research Assistant, Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development
Data collection – INTERLEARN project
Education
PhD Psychology, Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck (2022 – to present)
MSc Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology (Distinction), Birkbeck (2018– 2021)
BSc Psychology with Neuroscience, Birkbeck (2014 – 2018)