Jessica Logan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Special Education Jessica Logan is a quantitative methodologist who studies child development, with an emphasis on growth in academic skills from preschool through fourth grade for children at risk for learning disabilities. She has expertise in a broad range of quantitative analytic and methodological techniques, which she applies to understanding individual differences in children’s development. She is particularly interested in adapting new statistical models or research designs for questions about how children’s academic skills grow and change. Dr. Logan is a Founding Member and Vice President of Communications: Providing Opportunities for Women in Education Research (POWER) and the Cohost of the developmental science podcast Within and Between.
Rex (Chak) Li, Ph.D.
Rex (Chak) Li, Ph.D. recently earned his doctorate in Special Education from Vanderbilt University, where he specialized in quantitative research methods and their application to improve outcomes for individuals with autism and intellectual disabilities. His research integrates various statistical techniques such as structural equation modeling, multilevel modeling, and exploratory graph analysis, with machine learning approaches to examine caregiver advocacy, school-home communication, and service accessibility. Drawing on five years of experience as a special education teacher and coordinator in New York City, Dr. Li bridges practitioner insight with data-driven inquiry. He has contributed to several interdisciplinary, grant-funded projects and received recognition including the John G. Borkowski Diversity Award and the Melvyn I. Semmel Dissertation Research Award. His work aims to develop scalable, equity-focused interventions that enhance collaboration between families and educational professionals.
Qinggang Yu, Ph.D.
Dr. Qinggang Yu is a social psychologist and quantitative methodologist with research interests in developing adaptive behavioral change interventions. He is specialized in designing adaptive interventions in health and education domains, and in optimizing and evaluating these interventions using novel trial designs (e.g., sequential multiple assignment randomized trial, micro-randomized trial). His work also focuses on engagement in behavioral change interventions, including the best practices for measuring, predicting, and improving engagement, especially in the digital health domain. Prior to joining the Logan Lab, Dr. Yu received his PhD in social psychology from the University of Michigan and worked as a research fellow at the d3 center (Data Science for Dynamic Intervention Decision Making Center) at Michigan.
Christine White, Ph.D.
Dr. Christine White is a postdoctoral scholar in the Logan Lab within Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education. She recently completed her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at Florida State University where she was also an IES pre-doctoral training fellow within the Florida Center for Reading Research. Her postdoctoral work will focus primarily on leading metascientific research and developing resources to support education researchers’ confident participation in data management and sharing. She is also interested in school-based assessment of reading skills, and engages in scholarship related to universal screening to predict risk for dyslexia.
Alexis Swanz
Lexi is a fourth year PhD student in the High Incidence Special Education program. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from the College of Saint Benedict & Saint John’s University. Her research interests include research design, measurement, quantitative methods, and critical issues in data, such as missing data, data deidentification, and data management.