Yanrong Chen is a graduate student in the Developmental Psychology program. She is broadly interested in how social experiences shape adolescent brain development and behavior. Yanrong received her B.S. degrees in Nursing and Psychology from Peking University, China in 2020. During her master’s study at South China Normal University, under the mentorship of Dr. Wei Zhang, she investigated the influence of family and peer contexts on adolescent non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). Intrigued by the neural underpinnings of adolescent behaviors, she then spent two years as a research assistant in Dr. Chao-Gan Yan’s lab at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and subsequently Tsinghua University, China, where she gained expertise in fMRI methods. Her desire to integrate her interests in developmental psychology and neuroscience led her to the Telzer lab. Here, she plans to explore how life experiences impact the structure and function of the adolescent brain, and how these neural changes, in turn, influence behaviors such as risk-taking. In her free time, she enjoys shopping in the grocery store and spending time with friends.