@HEART; Healthy Experiences Across Relationships and Transitions lab (Ha)
Welcome to the Healthy Experiences Across Relationships and Transitions lab (@HEART lab)!
Visit the main Website here!
Young people today are growing up in a world where relationships unfold across both physical and digital spaces. At the @HEART Lab, we study how teens and young adults build, maintain, and sometimes struggle within their romantic relationships, and how these experiences shape their emotional well-being, identity development, academic success, and long-term adjustment.
Our research explores the full landscape of adolescent relationships: the excitement of forming new connections, the challenges of communication and conflict, the changes in family dynamics, and the emotional impact of breakups or stressful experiences. We pay close attention to the cultural, community, and socioeconomic contexts that influence how teens navigate these relationships.
Because digital life is inseparable from modern relationships, our work also investigates how technologies like social media, texting, virtual reality, and emerging AI tools shape the ways teens communicate, seek support, and handle relationship challenges. We are developing cutting-edge methods to capture real interactions, online and offline, to better understand how relationship processes develop in real time.
By integrating perspectives from developmental science, psychology, technology research, and public health, our goal is to identify both the risks young people face and the strengths they bring to their relationships. Ultimately, our work aims to guide interventions that help teens and young adults build safe, supportive, and empowering relationships across all the spaces they inhabit.
Join the lab!
We have a fantastic team of undergraduates who play an integral role in our research. We periodically accept new research assistants to assist in the lab for course credit or to volunteer. If you are interested in our research, please fill out our interest form. Contact our Lab Manager at [email protected] for more information and qualification requirements.
(Back row (left to right): Bria Welch, Shane Kasmarogi, Emma Calveri, William Margulis, Trinity Strecker, and Elizabeth Nguyen. Front row (left to right): Annie Cooper, Olivia Maras, Selena Quiroz, Panya Bhalla, Thao Ha, and Ava Trimble. Not pictured: Maheeyah Mukarram, Emily Randle, Noor Lababidi, Rachel Aronoff, Shea Saysavanh, Shreya Konakalla, and Victoria Klennert.)
Thao Ha, PhD. Lab Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Ha is an associate professor and a member of the developmental and clinical faculty. Her multidisciplinary research focuses on the development of adolescent romantic relationships. Dr. Ha investigates how partner choices, in-person and digital relationship dynamics, and break-ups affect adolescents’ emotional and behavioral adjustment over time. The goal of this research is to better understand why some adolescents are highly vulnerable to their relationship experiences. Dr. Ha earned her PhD in Psychology from Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands in 2013. Dr. Ha completed a postdoctoral and assistant research positions in the School of Social and Family Dynamics, the Institute for Interdisciplinary Salivary Bioscience Research (IISBR), and Department of Psychology at Arizona State University. Dr. Ha received three early career awards, including the APS Rising Star from APS, the Young Scientist Award from the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development, and the Young Scholar Award for Social Neuroscience Perspectives on Child Development from the Society for Research on Child Development and the Jacobs Foundation. Curriculum Vitae.
Taren McGray, PhD, MPH. Post-Doctoral Research Scholar
Dr. McGray (Dr. Mac) is a behavioral and social health scientist and the post-doctoral researcher in the @HEART lab. Her research examines the epidemiology and measurement of sexual and dating victimization in underrepresented global communities, particularly as emerging digital technologies alter the context of how harm is perpetrated and who experiences it. Dr. Mac is interested in how digital platforms are used in relationships; how social identities impact digital and in-person victimization; how that information can be used to guide programming, policy, and advocacy; and how network-oriented approaches can be engaged to reduce risk and foster healthier relationships.
Current graduate students
Olivia Maras, MA. - Olivia is a Developmental Psychology PhD student at ASU. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2020. She is interested in peer, romantic, and familial relationships, and how these relationships influence healthy development and risk-taking behaviors. She is additionally interested in how technology and digital experiences shape relationships, including experiences of digital dating abuse.
Jen Figueroa, MA. - Jen is a Developmental Psychology PhD student interested in the role of adolescents' and young adults’ sociocultural and digital contexts on their in-person and digital relationship dynamics and mental health. She received her B.A. and M.A. in Psychological Science at California State University San Marcos.
Tamira Whitaker - Tamira is a Developmental Psychology PhD student at ASU. Tamira earned a B.S. in Psychology from Georgia State University. She is interested in adolescent romantic and familial relationships, with a focus on how these connections influence academic engagement, dating abuse among youth, and the role of parental involvement in shaping outcomes. In addition, she is also interested in how adolescents use AI as a support tool and its impact on emotional well-being, help-seeking behaviors, and the development of interpersonal skills.
Meera Patel - Meera is a Developmental Psychology PhD student at ASU. Meera earned her B.S. in Psychology at Stony Brook University and was a Research Coordinator at Cincinnati Children's Center for ADHD and the University of Rochester's Mt. Hope Family Center. She is interested in studying the bidirectional nature of relationship dysfunction and externalizing psychopathology, with a particular focus on how factors such as cultural processes and digital media influence adolescents' responses to adversity in their relationships.
Current affiliated graduate students
David Renjaän, Msc (PhD candidate - Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud Universiteit)
Past graduate students
Selena Quiroz, PhD (Senior Academic Researcher at EdPlus at ASU)
Adam Rogers, PhD (Assistant Professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University)
Frank Poulsen, PhD (Associate Director of Institutional Research at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
Current Lab Manager
Natalie Gross - Natalie earned her B.S. in psychology from ASU and was a research assistant in the @HEART Lab. She was the Project Coordinator on our Daily TIES Study, and the third wave of our TIES Study. Natalie is interested in exploring how digital environments and exposure to mature online content influence adolescent development, risk, and relationship outcomes. She is exploring PhD programs in Psychology for Fall 2026. She is currently leading an innovative project evaluating how effectively AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, respond to adolescents’ romantic relationship concerns, incorporating insights from teen-focused online communities.
Current undergraduate student assistants
Prescilla Pascua
Audrey Hammond
Alec Donahoo
Jade Li
Taylor Jones
Kiko Gonzales
Jagger Proctor
Whitney Christy
Jaager Howell
Angela Sun
Sam Green
Noah Hatton
Elden Hendrick
Tanya Lopez
Kathy Gusenkov
Alicia Coleman
Katya Romero
Jose Pena Galvez
Galilea Rivero
Raieka Dhar
Sally Tan
Raghav Datta
Maggie Auza
Research affiliations
Research and Education Advancing Children’s Health Institute (REACH), ASU
https://reachinstitute.asu.edu/
Institute for Interdisciplinary Salivary Bioscience Research (IISBR), UCI,
https://iisbr.uci.eduUci