Graduate Student Researchers

Oluwatoyin Ajilore

PhD Student in STEM Education

Oluwatoyin’s research focuses on supporting STEM college instructors to create responsive classrooms centered on student thinking through faculty professional development.

Her work spans the United States and the Global South, particularly Nigeria, drawing on by her experiences as an instructor, researcher, and professional development practitioner across both contexts.

Before her PhD at Tufts University, she was a faculty at the University of Ibadan, in Nigeria where she taught over 1,000 students. Trained originally in Geology with two master’s degrees in the geosciences, her interdisciplinary journey informs her commitment to transforming STEM teaching and learning.

Avis Carrero

PhD Student in Civil Engineering

Avis (He/Him/His) is a Black, LatinX doctoral candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research focuses on understanding faculty pedagogical decisions surrounding issues of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ) from a critical, qualitative perspective. He has a master’s degree in civil engineering with a specialized focus in geosystems engineering. Avis is also a committee member of the Anti-racism and Equity Action Team (ACT) at his alma mater, the University of Connecticut, and a student member of Tufts School of Engineering’s DEI committee. Before joining Tufts in 2019, he spent two years as a geotechnical site engineer in the northeastern U.S. 

Emmanuel Daring

PhD Student in STEM Education

Emmanuel (he/him) is a PhD student in STEM Education with experience teaching chemistry and calculus at the secondary school level. His research interests include curriculum design intentionally supporting students who have struggled in previous STEM courses and the role of secondary schools in fostering the social identity development of their students. Emmanuel is currently working on a research project examining how students conceive of the structures of multiplication and division and the impact that has on their  understanding of situations in calculus and physics.

Samuel Gavitte

PhD Student in Chemical Engineering

Sam (he/him) researches engineering practices and how to facilitate students' engagement in them in laboratory courses. He is concerned with both designing instructional tools and analyzing them with qualitative methods. His interests are in implementing authentic engineering problems in the classroom and supporting students to engage with these problems in diverse and agentic ways.
 

Sophia Jeon

PhD Student in STEM Education

Sophia's research focuses on how students and instructors engage with uncertainty, confusion, and not-knowing in undergraduate physics classes. She explores the intersect of emotional, epistemic, and relational dynamics around uncertainty and ways that relationality—caring for and attending to one another's emotions and well-being—is an integral part of how both students and instructors learn to navigate uncertainty better. Her research informs and is shaped by her teaching introductory physics courses as an instructor that strives to teach responsively — attending and engaging meaningfully with students' thinking.  

Shirin Kuppusamy

PhD Student in STEM Education

Shirin (she/her) is a STEM Education PhD student in Dr. Milo Koretsky’s research group. Prior to starting at Tufts, she studied computing at Olin College of Engineering and then worked in industry for two years. Her current research with the Koretsky group is focused on studying how undergraduate students engage with ambiguity, uncertainty, and confusion in STEM classrooms. She also works on programming situated virtual laboratories to integrate with an instructional tool called Concept Warehouse. Her research interests include university education, accessibility, and the intersections of science and computing/engineering.

Sarah Kaczynski

PhD Student in STEM Education

Sarah is a PhD student in STEM Education. She received her BS in Computer Science and MS in Data Science from Wentworth Institute of Technology while working in IT/software engineering. She is currently working with Dr. Milo Koretsky on the development and maintenance of engineering education software, namely the Concept Warehouse. Her research interests include computer science education, educational technologies, and the gamification of learning.

Clara Mabour

PhD Student in STEM Education

Clara Mabour is a STEM Education Ph.D. She has a bachelor’s in environmental science from the University of Florida. Prior to starting her studies at Tufts, Clara taught high school science and research and she ran STEM and invention focused after school programs and summer camps in South Florida. Clara’s research interests focus on the intersection of culture, learner agency, materials, and problem solving in informal and formal K-12 STEM learning spaces. 

G. R. Marvez

PhD Student in STEM Education and Cognitive Science

Marvez is a Joint PhD student in the STEM Education and Cognitive Science Program. They earned their SB in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and SM in Comparative Media Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Tufts, their research focused on designing digital classroom simulations to train teachers in facilitating controversial discussions and developing machine learning systems for automated feedback tools. Marvez currently works with Prof. Greses Pérez on the development of place-based STEM games with local K8 students and multilingual engineering education curricula. 

Olha Sus

PhD Student in STEM Education

Olha is working on the Multiplicative Foundations of Calculus project. The project is based on examining possible constraints in students’ understandings of how multiplication and division relate quantities and form new quantities in problem situations. The latter plays a fundamental role in applying integration and differentiation techniques to problems in mathematics, engineering, and other sciences. 

David Zabner

PhD Student in STEM Education

David plans to study CS and Engineering education. He hopes to focus on finding ways to introduce complex CS and engineering topics in early grades as well as helping undergraduates approach CS scientifically.