Lab News

Prof. Lopez is a co-investigator on a research team that was recently awarded a President’s Research Catalyst Grant. The overarching goal of the proposal is to understand and prevent adverse effects of social media on mental health with AI.

The scale and complexity of these kinds of problems require researchers to get out of their disciplinary silos and collaborate. Prof. Lopez is grateful to be working with Prof. Dmitry Korkin, Prof. Elke Rundensteiner, Prof. Benjamin Nephew, and other amazing researchers at WPI, UMass Chan Medical School, and UMass Amherst on this exciting project!

New paper alert!

Prof. Lopez, student co-author Gabriel Traub, and collaborators Dr. Brittany Tausen, Effie Marathia, and Dr. Blair Saunders found evidence for links between people’s connectedness with their future selves and eating behaviors in daily life.

These and other findings can be found in a recently published, open-access paper titled, “Connecting to our future, healthier selves: Associations between self-continuity measures and eating behaviors in daily life.”

Congratulations to SNAP Lab member Sophia Kouznetsov ’26, who was recently featured in WPI’s Student Voices! Speaking about her time in the lab thus far, Sophia said, “Since the beginning of my freshman year, I have been a research associate in the SNAP Lab at WPI. This experience opened my eyes to the world of academia and research in a field that I am passionate about. It gave me the opportunity to connect with students and faculty that share my interests and passions. Pursuing research in the SNAP Lab has also given me the opportunity to greatly expand my knowledge and skill base, not only of psychology and neuroscience, but also of data management and analysis, coding, writing scientific literature, and presenting research.”