Alex Bui

Across five years of research experience, I have worked in various settings ranging from ophthalmology to patient safety and developmental medicine. My academic interests span broadly across child development and translational neuroscience, but I am most passionate about research at the intersection of early adversity and developmental psychopathology. In my future career, I hope to combine rigorous qualitative methods with advanced neuroimaging techniques to study the etiological heterogeneity of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders across the lifespan. 

Before transferring to Penn, I studied early childhood intervention under Dr. Philip Fisher in the Stress Neurobiology and Prevention (SNAP) Lab at the University of Oregon. At Penn, I research early socio-emotional development within parent-child interactions in the Emotion, Development, Environment, & Neurogenetics (EDEN) Lab under Dr. Rebecca Waller. Currently, I am assisting in developing a novel observational coding measure to characterize social affiliation in children and leading an independent project to investigate early affective displays as risk factors for callous-unemotional traits.

• Research Assistant in the Emotion, Development, Environment, & Neurogenetics (EDEN) Lab
• Research Assistant in the Stress Neurobiology and Prevention (SNAP) Lab (2019–2024)
• Vice President for Research and Innovation (VPRI) Undergraduate Fellow (2021)
• PMG Group Lead