Di Liu

I am a 4th-year Ph.D. candidate at the Lab for Child Development, Psychological & Brain Sciences Department, Johns Hopkins University, advised by Dr. Lisa Feigenson. 

My research asks how humans (including babies!) make new discoveries. Discoveries do not begin from coincidence alone. They are often inspired by observations that we cannot yet understand, from apples falling from trees rather than floating upward, to bees and ants navigating home precisely from far away... These observations nurture discoveries because they mark the gaps in our knowledge, making us curious how they happened! But not every surprising observation leads to discovery -- Why? My work asks what kinds of observations spark the strongest curiosity, and what cognitive mechanisms (especially, what kind of representations) allow us to transform that initial curiosity into a question that can be explored, tested, and eventually resolved as a new discovery. 

An essential element of discovering how we discover is collaboration. I am grateful to work on related questions about how humans learn, reason, and discover, with a wonderful group of collaborators including Drs. Marina Dubova, Kara Kedrick, Robert Hawkins, Justin Halberda, Kishore Kuchibhotla, Jacob Foster, soon-to-be Dr. Nick Bisbee, and my friends -- Zyan Wang, Joseph Outa, and Rhea Kapur.

If these questions excite you too, I am happy to chat more! And if you happen to be a parent of a child between 3 months and 6 years old, you can learn more about participating in my studies on our lab website linked above!