ABOUT ME
I am a music educator specializing in early childhood music and an interdisciplinary researcher working at the intersections of music, education, psychology, and culture. My research examines the psychological and social dimensions of everyday musical experiences across diverse populations.
Currently, I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Child Study Center at Yale University (since 2022), where I work in the Music Lab (PI: Dr. Samuel Mehr). My recent research focuses on how everyday enrichment activities, particularly music, shape infant and caregiver experiences, behavior, and well-being in daily life. Using intensive longitudinal and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods, I study how repeated everyday experiences may accumulate over time, including through an NIH-funded R21 project.
My broader research background has included work with the International Research Symposium on Talent Education (IRSTE) research team of the Suzuki Association of the Americas and an affiliation with the Experimental Acoustics Research Studio (EARS) at the University of California, Riverside. These experiences have contributed to my broader interests in music learning, musical development, and the role of music across educational, social, and cultural contexts.
I received my Doctor of Musical Arts in Music Education from the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. My doctoral dissertation examined relationships among small ensemble experience, empathy, and emotional self-regulation. My doctoral training also included interdisciplinary work at the USC Brain and Creativity Institute and with AIRS: Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing. I also hold a Master of Arts and a Master of Education in Music and Music Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance from Keimyung University in South Korea.
Before focusing primarily on research, I spent many years teaching early childhood music and cello in early childhood education centers, K–12 schools, colleges, private studios, and community music programs in South Korea, New York, and Los Angeles. Those experiences continue to shape how I think about music, learning, and development. In more recent years, my experiences as a parent have also become an important lens through which I think about research, particularly the role that music and other everyday activities can play in family life.
I am currently based in Los Angeles, California, with my husband and our two quickly growing children.