Highlights

Riley Hoffman graduated cum laude from Harvard University in May 2023 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology.

Before returning to obtain her PhD in Psychology, Riley served as Lab Manager of the Emotional, Health, and Psychophysiology Lab at Yale University, led by Professor Wendy Berry Mendes.

Riley’s research experience in her undergraduate career was broad. She completed her senior honors thesis focusing on an innovative neuroimaging technique to help further understand depression.

She also conducted research bridging the gap between the latest neuroscience information and important public policy issues such as children’s well-being in the foster care system.

Contact Riley at riley.hoffman@yale.edu

Professional Experience

Lab Manager at the Emotion, Health, and Psychophysiology Lab: Yale University (August 2023 – Present)

•  Oversee all day-to-day operations of the social psychophysiology lab
•  Coordinate research staff and assist with training new staff
• Assist in renewals and modifications of IRB protocol applications

Research Assistant at the Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior: Massachusetts General Hospital (May 2022 – May 2023)

• Reviewed neuroscience literature on children’s decisional capacity and the importance of children’s voices being heard in foster care proceedings
• Synthesized literature in collaboration with colleagues and National Association of Counsel for Children
• Reviewed literature on dementia and financial capacity in elder adults and synthesized that literature to generate a white paper on necessary increased protections for elders to prevent exploitation

Research Assistant at the Meditation Research Group: Massachusetts General Hospital (February 2020 – May 2023)

• Executed a large-scale fMRI data analysis project, analyzing the data from raw format through all stages of processing using Linux OS, fMRIPrep, AFNI, and FreeSurfer on the McLean Imaging Center Computing Cluster 
• Accomplished my Senior Thesis, including conducting literature review, gaining in-depth understanding of resting state fMRI and state-of-the-art cortical parcellation methods, executing quality control measures, generating cortical and subcortical visualizations, and interpreting my findings and their impact on the field 
• Assisted in growing lab by interviewing new hires and serving as a resource for new hires to gain institutional knowledge

Summer Intern at the National Eye Institute: National Institutes of Health (June 2021 – August 2021)

• Scrutinized an existing behavioral paradigm examining brain mechanisms of color perception in macaques
• Developed and iterated an original statistical model to understand macaques’ experience of behavioral paradigm 
• Created a poster and presentation to display my findings at the 2021 NIH Summer Research Week

Education

BA (cum laude) Psychology, Harvard University (2023). GPA: 3.9

Publications