Dr. Leonard is not currently accepting PhD students.

We are not currently hiring for this position.

If you are interested in a postdoc position, please email Dr. Leonard directly at julia.leonard@yale.edu.

• The Leonard Learning Lab is now accepting Research Assistant applications for Fall 2025 through September 5th, 2025.

• Research Assistants in the Leonard Learning Lab will be directly involved in running studies that further our understanding of children’s persistence, motivation, and learning. RAs must receive course credit in our lab for one semester before becoming eligible for federal work-study. 

• GENERAL QUALIFICATIONS

1. Familiar with and interested in developmental psychology. Strong candidates should have taken/be concurrently enrolled in Intro to Psychology and potentially Developmental Psychology.

2. Experience working with children and families. (This can include formal experience, such as volunteering at a school or camp, and/or informal experience, such as babysitting friends’ and relatives’ children.)

3. Basic proficiency with general computer applications, including Zoom, Google Drive, and Box.

4. Basic proficiency with R or other programming languages. Students who have never worked with R can complete a Codecademy course as part of their onboarding.

5. Candidates should be collaborative, organized, responsible, and proactive.

• EXPECTATIONS

  • Research assistants are responsible for conducting studies with infants, children, and teenagers, interacting with parents and guardians, supporting research and stimuli design, doing data management and simple analysis, and actively participating in lab meetings. Each RA is paired with a mentor in the lab: either a graduate student, postdoc, or the lab manager.

  • Expected time commitment: 8-10 hours per week, with at least 2 weekend shifts per month.

• APPLICATION MATERIALS

  • To apply, please send the following materials to lab manager Surya Marimuthu at surya.marimuthu@yale.edu with the email subject line as "[YOUR FIRST AND LAST NAME] L3 RA Application”

    • Resume/CV (.docx or .pdf)

    • Cover Letter (1 paragraph stating why you want to work in the lab and any relevant experiences you want to highlight)

The Leonard Learning Lab is not currently accepting applications for summer research assistants.

The Leonard Learning Lab is not currently accepting senior thesis students. Please check back next year.

Our lab is able to supervise thesis students from the Psychology and Cognitive Science majors. In order to be considered as a potential thesis student for our lab, you must meet the following requirements:

1. You must complete at least 1 semester as a research assistant, unless you receive express permission from the PI.

2. You are generally expected to write your thesis on one of the lab’s already existing projects/datasets. For example, you might write about a project that you have been an RA on previously; or, you might explore data from an older project in a novel way. For instance, Marissa Healy (thesis student 2022-23) did her thesis on Reut Shachnai’s project looking at over-engaged parenting. Although the study primarily focused on parents’ physical actions, Marissa developed a novel research question about parents’ verbal interventions during the study, like providing direct instruction or positive feedback. She coded all of the audio data from the study and worked with Reut to analyze them in R. This is a great example of how you can create an original research question within an already established project, while providing critical help to your research mentor!

3. In some cases, we will supervise a thesis looking at an original question stemming from another project in the lab. In this case, you must secure your own funding (such as the Mellon Grant, or a CIPE fellowship for summer work) to support this work. It is most feasible to do this in cases where you can run a survey online (like on Prolific or MTurk), code your own remote study (like on Lookit), or run a study with Yale undergraduates (SONA).

4. You must set up a meeting with your lab mentor and Julia to discuss your interest in completing a thesis.

5. After the initial meeting with your lab mentor and Julia and before the lab agrees to supervise your thesis, you must write a formal thesis proposal. The proposal will help us (and you) evaluate whether your project is tractable for a one-year thesis timeline. In this proposal, you must provide a compelling overview of your thesis topic (around 5 pages double-spaced, including 2-3 pages of relevant literature and 2-3 pages of proposed methods and hypotheses), plus a 1-2 page timeline for completing your thesis. Generally, this proposal should be submitted by the end of your junior year.

The Leonard Learning Lab is not currently accepting applications for research assistants

The lab does not currently have any opportunities for high school students to get involved in research. Please check out these other opportunities at Yale for high schoolers in New Haven.

As a lab that studies how children learn and persist, we appreciate your interest in our research and depend on support and input from families like yours.

If you would like your child to be part of our research, we run studies for kids of different ages online, at museums, and schools. Check out this page for more info!

If you would like to learn more about our research, read more about it here and check out media coverage of our work here.

In line with departmental guidelines outlined by the Yale Psychology Committee for Racial Equity and Justice, our lab does not accept volunteers.  All students who wish to work in our lab, both in the academic year and during the summer, must formally apply through the processes outlined above and secure funding (or other compensation) for their work in the lab.