Meet the GGSC’s New Fellows for 2026-2027

September 22, 2026

The Greater Good Science Center is proud to present its 2026–27 class of Research Fellows, an outstanding group of UC Berkeley students from fields including psychology, public health, social welfare, design, and information science. Their research explores how empathy, social connection, technology, and community can shape individual and collective well-being.

The GGSC’s annual fellowship program supports UC Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students whose research relates to the Center’s mission. The program brings together scholars from across a broad range of disciplines, with a particular focus on the social-behavioral sciences.

This year’s fellows are investigating topics such as empathy in relationships, constructive dialogue across differences, AI and well-being, social connection online, and the effects of social and policy environments on well-being. Read on to meet our newest fellows, and visit our fellowships page for more details about the program and summaries of past fellows’ work.

Graduate Fellows

Aleena Khan - Hornaday Fellow

Aleena Khan is a Master’s in Development Practice student at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Originally from India, she has spent over a decade working at the intersection of education, gender equity, and community-based development, including as a teacher and co-founder of learning initiatives for underserved students. This work has taught her that lasting change depends not only on stronger policies, but also on people’s ability to listen, understand, and work across differences. As a GGSC fellow, Aleena will study how structured constructive dialogue can help undergraduate students build empathy, intellectual humility, and the skills to engage meaningfully with others. Through this work, she hopes to support more connected, inclusive, and compassionate campus communities.

Kylie Cassutt

Kylie Cassutt is a Ph.D. candidate in Social-Personality Psychology at UC Berkeley. Prior to Berkeley, she earned her bachelor’s degree in Social Psychology at UC San Diego. Her research focuses on how emotional processes such as empathy and interpersonal emotion regulation impact relationships. As a GGSC fellow, she will investigate how empathy predicts and influences emotions and relationship outcomes of romantic couples following an in-lab conflict conversation, as well as longitudinally outside of the lab, to learn more about the nature and consequences of empathy in situations in which it may be challenging.

Conrado Eiroa-Solans

Originally from Spain, Conrado Eiroa-Solans is a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at UC Berkeley who previously completed a master’s degree at the University of Oxford. His research lies at the intersection of emotion, curiosity, and decision-making, with a particular focus on situation selection as a dynamic control process through which people shape their emotional experiences over time. His fellowship project examines how momentary positive affect changes people’s willingness to engage with emotionally negative experiences, testing whether feeling good increases exploration through heightened epistemic motivation or reduced concern about potential hedonic consequences—or both.

Priya Gangolly

Priya Gangolly is a Doctor of Public Health candidate at UC Berkeley. She holds a BA in Psychology and an MPH in Public Health Communications and Marketing. She spent 15 years in health technology, including at Meta, where she partnered with the CDC to address misinformation during the pandemic. Her research examines how people use conversational AI to support their well-being, how AI-generated empathy influences human connection, and how risks vary for populations facing barriers to care. As a GGSC fellow, she will explore how these findings can inform safer product design and responsible governance.

Insun Heo - Libby Fee Fellow

Insun Heo is a Master of Design candidate at UC Berkeley researching acoustic accessibility and is currently interning at Google Search. With a visual design foundation from Kingston University London, she is passionate about building products, designing environments, and writing that turns research into stories people can understand and connect with. She is a 2026 Roselyn Lindheim Award recipient and Autodesk Graduate Fellow.

Rishika Shah

Rishika Shah is a Ph.D. student in the Clinical Science program at UC Berkeley. She earned her B.S. in Psychology from Arizona State University and completed a post-baccalaureate research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. Her graduate research examines socio-ecological predictors of substance use and internalizing symptoms, focusing on social connection, rewarding substance-free activities, and culturally relevant risk and protective factors. As a GGSC fellow, she will investigate how alcohol use shapes daily social interactions among Asian American young adults. Findings will help clarify the role of drinking in social connection and its implications for well-being.

Gowri Swamy

Gowri Swamy is a Ph.D. student in the School of Information at UC Berkeley. She received her bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science and Psychology and master’s degree in Information Management and Systems, both from UC Berkeley. Her research uses empirical methods to understand how the development of prosocial behaviors might be considered in the design of digital social platforms. As a GGSC research fellow, she will investigate how opportunities for self-disclosure in dyadic online interactions lead to the cultivation and display of cooperation, trust, and reciprocity. She will also examine how agency in such participation can help build network-level characteristics of generalized reciprocity and trust to create stronger online communities.

Michelle Zaragoza

Michelle Zaragoza, MSW, LCSW (she/ella), is a doctoral student in the School of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley. Drawing from her experiences as a daughter of immigrants and her professional work as a community-based mental health therapist, her scholarship explores the impact of racialized state-sanctioned violence on Latiné well-being and how social work can help mitigate and resist these conditions. As a GGSC fellow, Michelle will explore the psychosocial impacts of contemporary anti-immigrant policy environments on Latiné young adults and how community-based practitioners can enact structurally responsive and culturally grounded interventions to promote well-being and healing among Latiné communities.

Undergraduate Fellows

Rafaella Benoit - Goldberg Fellow

Rafaella Benoit is a transfer student majoring in Psychology and Sociology. She currently conducts research with Haas Scholars and SSRP. Her research interests center on social inequality, digital environments, and mental health, particularly how online platforms shape emotional development and interpersonal behavior among vulnerable populations. She is interested in the intersection of psychology, technology, and social context. Her project is a pilot study examining how algorithmically curated relationship content on social media may shape perceptions of trust, intimacy, and emotional norms among young women from disadvantaged neighborhoods. Her project explores how digital engagement may influence the development of prosocial relationship scripts rooted in compassion, reciprocity, and emotional stability.

Christopher Lee - Goldberg Fellow

Christopher Lee is a senior undergraduate studying Molecular and Cell Biology, Neurobiology, and Data Science. He is a research assistant in Professor Stephan Lammel’s lab, investigating how dopaminergic pathways in the brain contribute to behaviors like motivation and learning that are critical in promoting social interactions and happiness. As an aspiring physician-scientist, he hopes that understanding the basic mechanisms of neural circuits underlying neuropsychiatric diseases like depression and anxiety will lead to more effective therapies and foster a more informed, compassionate societal view of mental health.