Xiaoran Sun

As a developmental and family psychologist, I conduct research on the interplay between family systems processes and well-being across adolescence and young adulthood, situated in the larger socio-ecological context--including the cultural context and digital context. With my data science background, I am also interested in applying innovative methods and data to family and developmental research.

Currently, I study how adolescents and parents use smartphones, and how their digital behaviors influence their well-being and relationships. For this research, I use high-intensity, passive sensing data collected from participants' smartphones (every 5 seconds over up to 6 months) to objectively observe and examine their digital behaviors across multiple time-scales. This project is titled the Family Screenome Project, which is being conducted in collaboration with the Stanford Human Screenome Project. This work is supported by the University of Minnesota's Grant-in-Aid of Research, Artistry, and Scholarship. Here's more about this grant in this story. 

Further, I am also leading the research on applying machine learning to the analysis of large-scale, national longitudinal datasets to build predictive models based on adolescent experiences in predicting their developmental outcomes, including educational and career achievements and well-being. See a research article published on this topic. This work is supported by the Spencer Foundation. Read more about this work in this story. 

I strongly believe in team science and interdisciplinary collaborations. Beyond my appointment at Family Social Science, I am also a core faculty member at the Learning Informatics Lab in the College of Education and Human Development, and a faculty affiliate at the Data Science Iniative in the College of Science and Engineering and at the Minnesota Population Center.

Teaching and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students are extremely important to me.  I hope every student can walk out of my classroom by using the knowledge learned to be a better or happier partner, parent, caregiver, sibling, and/or friend. I see building agency and self-efficacy in students an important part of my teaching, especially for research methods classes. I believe it is important to create a supportive and inclusive classroom environment for students from diverse backgrounds to learn knowledge and skills.