Two ICD doctoral students receive prestigious dissertation fellowships

Two Institute of Child Development PhD candidates, Andrei Semenov and Robin Sifre, have been awarded the 2020-21 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Minnesota Graduate School.

The highly competitive fellowship provides support to the University’s most accomplished PhD students, so they can devote full-time effort to their research and writing their dissertation.

Semenov’s dissertation is, “Ready4Routines: Improving Child Executive Function Skills Through Quality Parent-Child Interactions.” He is working alongside Burnsville ISD191 to deliver a parenting intervention to improve parent-child interactions, parenting stress, and child executive function. His advisor is ICD Professor Philip Zelazo.

Sifre’s dissertation will focus on “Brain Development and Attention Coordination in Infancy.” Her advisors are ICD Associate Professors Jed Elison and Daniel Berry.