Research Overview

“Working between first-person experience and third-person measurement.”

Hi, I'm Cyra! 👋 I really love beautiful things — from beauty itself to research that's beautiful in how it's made.

Lately I'm into interoception, consciousness, and affective science across methods, with side quests into language models and AI. I come at it from computational methods.

Off the clock: yoga, books and writing, fashion, and video games.

InteroceptionAffective NeuroscienceComputational PsycholinguisticsClinical Psychology
News
Nov 2026
Side Quest
Started as a real-time Korean–English medical interpreter at The Peak Clinic (dermatology), Seoul — for part-time cash, and to help out a friend.
Oct 2026
New Role
Joined the Embodied Computation Group (Aarhus University & Cambridge Psychiatry) as a remote research intern — LLMs, interoception, and consciousness.
Sep 2026
New Role
Rejoined UPenn Department of Psychiatry as remote research intern — multimodal AI scoring of therapist interpersonal skills.
Aug 2026
Poster
Presented an AYUI immunology poster on Treg biology, mechanisms, and therapeutic potential at the STEM Union Academic Conference 2026.
Jul 2026
Revision
ARR reviews received — withdrawing short paper this cycle to resubmit as long paper for the next.
Jun 2026
New Role
Joined Shanghai AI Laboratory as RA for AI4BioSci / SciForge — contributing to verification-oriented scientific-agent infrastructure.
May 2026
New Role
Joined the Clinical Neuroscience of Anxiety and Depression (CAD) Lab at Yonsei University (Dr. Juyoen Hur / 허주연) as RA — studying interoception and vulnerability mechanisms in anxiety and depression.
Earlier …
Dec 2025
Poster
Presented "Predicting Next-Day Suicidal Urges, Depression, and PTSD Symptoms Using EMA and Passive Sensing" at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Annual Convention.
Nov 2025
New Role
Joined UPenn Department of Psychiatry as RA — working on a research project.
Oct 2025
New Role
Joined Stanford Psychophysiology Lab as RA — developing reproducible R pipelines for 10,000+ EMA and sleep diary records.
Sep 2025
Leave
Took leave of absence — returned home to recover, cared for grandpa and cat Guagua 🐱
Sep 2025
Publication
JASP paper published — "Underestimating Others' Positive Attitude Toward AI Reduces Intentions to Adopt AI in Various Business Contexts" in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology (56(6), 443-456).
Jan 2025
Exchange
Exchange at Washington University in St. Louis — joined Speech & Hearing Lab; started clinical shadowing at CID and IDDRC.
Oct 2024
Publication
BJSP paper published — "Perceived Economic Inequality Inhibits Pro-Environmental Engagement" in the British Journal of Social Psychology (64(2), e12815).
Aug 2024
Poster
Presented "Neural Fatigue From Speech Perception in Noise and Social Withdrawal" at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Brain and Mind Institute.
Experience
Embodied Computation Group, Aarhus University & Cambridge Psychiatry Oct 2026 – Present
Research Intern (remote); PI: Micah Allen, Ph.D.
  • Working on how language models, interoception, and consciousness fit together.
Stanford Psychophysiology Lab Oct 2025 – Present
Research Assistant; PIs: James Gross, Ph.D.; mentored by Maia ten Brink, Ph.D.
  • Built sleepcleanr, an R package that turns messy sleep-diary data into clean, auditable records (10,000+ entries and counting).
  • Reading widely on interoception, psychophysiology, and emotion.
Department of Psychiatry, Penn Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Nov 2025 – Apr 2026; Sep 2026 – Present
Research Intern (remote); mentored by Tao Lin, Ph.D.
  • Building a pipeline that has AI score how therapists connect with clients in teletherapy — and checking how far we can trust it.
  • Replicating a published study along the way, and fixing a confound in it.
Clinical Neuroscience of Anxiety and Depression (CAD) Lab, Yonsei University May 2026 – Present
Research Assistant; PI: Juyoen Hur, Ph.D.
  • Helping with fMRI studies on anxiety and depression, mostly data quality checks and preprocessing.
  • Side project on misophonia: is it about how the brain registers a sound, or how it feels about it?
Shanghai AI Laboratory May 2026 – Present
AI4BioSci / SciForge Research Assistant; PI: Zhangyang Gao, Ph.D.
  • Helping build and test an open-source platform that keeps humans in the loop when AI agents do research.
  • Added DeepSeek as a new agent runtime, and designed how the system tracks evidence and decides what people should review.
Speech & Hearing Lab, Washington University in St. Louis Jan 2025 – Jun 2026
Research Assistant; PIs: Mitchell Sommers, Ph.D.; Joe Barcroft, Ph.D.
  • Built an IPA-based scheme to measure how hard English words are to learn.
  • Helped run a vocabulary-learning experiment: recorded stimuli, tested participants, checked the stats.
Social Psychology Lab, Zhejiang University of Science and Technology Jul 2023 – Jun 2026
Long-Term Research Assistant; PI: Sijing Chen, Ph.D.
  • Ran the stats behind studies on inequality, AI attitudes, and pro-environmental behavior — two of them now published.
Brain and Mind Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Jun 2024 – Aug 2024
Research Assistant; PI: Xin Zhou, Ph.D.
  • Helped with fNIRS hyperscanning experiments (two brains, one conversation) and learned inter-brain analysis.
  • Presented a poster on neural fatigue from listening in noise.
Education
Yonsei University
B.A. in Philosophy
Interdisciplinary Major in Cognitive Science, Minor in Applied Statistics
Expected June 2027
GPA: ***/***
Washington University in St. Louis
Exchange Student in Arts & Sciences
Jan 2025 – Jun 2025
GPA: 3.75/4.0
MGH Institute of Health Professions
Online prerequisite coursework in Speech-Language Pathology
May 2025 – Aug 2025
GPA: 4.0/4.0
Publications & Presentations
sleepcleanr: an auditable pipeline for cleaning self-reported sleep-diary data, validated on injected, real and public data
Cai Dong, Maia ten Brink, et al.
Manuscript in preparation 2026
An auditable, human-in-the-loop R pipeline for cleaning self-reported sleep-diary data, validated on injected, real, and public data.
Multimodal AI scoring of facilitative interpersonal skills: a replication and specification audit on Tele-FIRST trial recordings
Cai Dong, Tao Lin, et al.
Manuscript in preparation 2026
Replication and specification audit of multimodal AI scoring of facilitative interpersonal skills on teletherapy RCT recordings.
Auditory and Visual Cue Integration in L1 Vocabulary Learning
WashU Speech & Hearing Lab
Poster, TBD 2026
Investigated how L1 learners integrate auditory and visual cues during vocabulary acquisition, with implications for multimodal learning theories.
ABCT poster
Predicting Next-Day Suicidal Urges, Depression, and PTSD Symptoms Using EMA and Passive Sensing
Tao Lin, Joshua Wiley, Yiqin Zhu, Cai Dong, Mingcong Tang, Daniel J. Taylor, Kristi E. Pruiksma, Bridget Feler, Marin Kautz, Justin Baker, Lauren Khazem, Craig J. Bryan, Lily A. Brown
Poster, Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Annual Convention 2025
Leveraged EMA and passive sensing data from smartphones to predict next-day clinical outcomes, demonstrating feasibility of scalable digital phenotyping for suicide risk monitoring.
AYUI STEM Union poster
Regulatory T cells: Biology, Mechanisms, and Therapeutic Potential
Hwang, H.Y., Dong, C., Jeong, S.Y., & Kim, J.E.
Poster, STEM Union Academic Conference 2026 2026
Contributor: figure editing, translation, and introduction writing for a review poster on Treg biology, mechanisms, and therapeutic strategies, presented at the STEM Union Academic Conference 2026 (Immunology Session).
JASP paper
Underestimating Others' Positive Attitude Toward AI Reduces Intentions to Adopt AI in Various Business Contexts
Rongmian Huo, Shasha Yang, Cai Dong, Sijing Chen
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 56(6), 443–456 2026
Demonstrated that people systematically underestimate others' AI-positive attitudes, and this underestimation reduces personal AI adoption intentions across business contexts.
Project details →DOI
BJSP paper
Perceived Economic Inequality Inhibits Pro-Environmental Engagement
Rongmian Huo, Shasha Yang, Cai Dong, Sijing Chen
British Journal of Social Psychology, 64(2), e12815 2024
Multi-study investigation showing that perceived economic inequality reduces pro-environmental behavior through decreased collective efficacy and future-oriented concern.
View project →DOI
CUHK posterCUHK poster 2
Neural Fatigue From Speech Perception in Noise and Social Withdrawal
Cai Dong, Patrick C. M. Wong, et al.
Poster, Chinese University of Hong Kong Brain and Mind Institute 2024
fNIRS hyperscanning study showing that speech perception in noise induces neural fatigue in the bilateral superior temporal gyrus, correlating with increased social withdrawal tendencies.
Hume’s aesthetic thoughts and modern art
Cai Dong
SHS Web of Conferences, 174, 02022 2023
Undergraduate paper on Hume’s aesthetics and its relevance to modern art.
DOI
Clinical, Community & Skills
Gold stars — a Yonsei merit scholarship (twice!), a national second prize in a Peking University Chinese literature contest, and a fully funded semester at WashU.
Field trips — sat in on therapy sessions and autism assessments at WashU's IDDRC; helped out as a teacher aide at the Central Institute for the Deaf.
Good deeds — art-program volunteer at Artists First; wrote 80+ clinical-psychology entries for Baidu Encyclopedia; cheered a student from a rural, low-income family all the way into university (2021–2025).
Clubs — AYUI (immunology!), a book-and-wine society, and a poetry club whose name I can't print (똥동아리) 💩.
Methods — the nerdy toolbox: GLMM/HLM, NLP, meta-analysis, EMA, multimodal analysis, fNIRS, fMRI quality control, pupillometry preprocessing.
Tools — R, Python, MATLAB, SQL, Git/GitHub, PsychoPy, and an unreasonable number of terminal tabs.
Languages — four, one brain: Mandarin (native), English (IELTS 8.0), Korean (TOPIK 6), Japanese (JLPT N2).
Side quests — live-interpreting Korean ↔ English at a Seoul clinic; teaching Korean and Chinese on the side.
Certificate — Autism and Neurodiversity in the Childcare Setting (UBC CIRCA).
GitHub Repositories
Explore projects → github.com/cyracaid

Let's Connect

Thanks for stopping by 🦦
Got a research idea, a weird question, a collab, or a coffee chat in mind? My inbox is open 🧚‍♀️

cyracaid[at]gmail.com GitHub LinkedIn
© 2026 Cai (“Cyra”) Dong