Ulziimaa Chimed-Ochir

Ulziimaa Chimed-Ochir is a Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) graduate student at Penn State. She previously studied at Mongolian University of Science and Technology, majoring in information systems and business administration. Ulziimaa first gained experience in psychological science while at Cornell University, where she obtained a master’s degree in developmental psychology as a Fulbright Scholar. Ulziimaa’s experience at Cornell drew her to pursue further opportunities in research at Penn State, which afforded a collaborative atmosphere and a diverse set of research projects within the HDFS program and its affiliate programs.

Ulziimaa's collaborative work with Dr. Douglas Teti and Dr. Christian Connell has focused on integrating research in both typical and atypical development, offering an opportunity to explore intricate intersections of developmental processes across diverse contexts. Her research focuses on the impacts of family context and parental mental health on children's attachment formation and socioemotional development during the early childhood years. She has investigated the study of childhood maltreatment and interventions that help children exposed to traumatic stressors build attachment with caregivers. Ulziimaa is particularly interested in how both risk and protective factors can inform the development of intervention programs geared towards mitigating the adverse consequences of child maltreatment and relational trauma on children's socioemotional development. Her dissertation project focused on how maternal depressive symptoms shape problem behaviors in the second year of life as influenced by infant-mother attachment quality. She has also examined the differing effects of caregiver’s trauma symptoms on children’s posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) while enrolled in a treatment program. Through these projects, Ulziimaa has learned that secure attachments can help offset behavioral problems related to childhood PTSD, dependent on the caregiver's mental health.

Ulziimaa plans to pursue an academic career after graduating from Penn State, further investigating the neurobiological factors related to the caregiver-child relationship in both parents and children who have experienced trauma. She hopes that this work will contribute to the development of interventions that counteract the disruptions that trauma can have on the caregiver-child relationship.