About Me
Hello! My name is Helen Schmidt and I am a Social Psychology & Quantitative Methods PhD student in the Social and Affective Neuroscience Lab at Temple University. Under the guidance of Dr. Chelsea Helion, my research focuses on the relationship between emotion and language in social contexts. I am passionate about employing a multimodal approach to my research, combining traditional behavioral and neuroimaging tools with machine learning and advanced quantitative methods.
Previously, I worked as the lab coordinator in Dr. Maureen Ritchey’s Memory Modulation Lab at Boston College, where I studied how retrieval strategies impacted memory for emotional information. Before that, I completed my undergraduate studies at Tufts University, where I graduated with a BS in biology in 2017. During my time at Tufts, I worked with Dr. Elizabeth Race in the Integrative Cognitive Neuroscience Lab to investigate how attention and mind-wandering impacted memory quality. I also completed a MSc in clinical neuroscience at University College London, where I studied learning and decision-making in affective contexts.
Outside of the lab, I can be found reading books, exploring new places, drinking coffee, and spending time outside. I’m also a huge data viz enthusiast - you can find some of my projects in my portfolio.