Yuyang Hu completed his PhD in Spring 2025. He started his academic journey as an undergraduate student majoring in law with a minor in applied psychology. He learned that he did not want to work as a prosecutor, judge, or lawyer, as most of his schoolmates did. Instead, he was attracted by the human mind and mental well-being and wanted to learn more about them. He switched his focus and earned a master’s degree in psychology at University of Memphis and a master’s degree in educational psychology at University of Virginia. During this period, he realized he was fascinated by family dynamics and chose to focus his efforts on family sciences when applying to PhD programs. He eventually entered UConn HDFS and worked with Dr. Beth Russell.
Yuyang had a clear intention to pursue a job in academia in China since his first day at UConn. To prepare for this goal, he accumulated valuable experience in research and teaching in the past four years. For most of these years, he worked with Dr. Beth Russell as a research assistant on the Connecticut School-Based Diversion Initiative (SBDI). His main responsibilities included data analyses and reports on how interventions by SBDI potentially contributed to the mental health and school disciplines of students at risk. He also worked with Drs. Kari Adamsons and Na Zhang on a substance use project and a mindfulness intervention meta-review respectively, which significantly improved his research skills. Additionally, he worked as a teaching assistant for Research Methods in HDFS (2004W) with Drs. Rachel Tambling and Keith Bellizzi and later taught the same course independently. These experiences deepened his understanding of how to be a good instructor.
Yuyang’s research interests mainly involve how parent-child relationships and parenting influence adolescents’ development in Chinese families. Because of the scope of the population, he was particularly interested in phenomena unique to Chinese families and the factors associated with these phenomena. From these interests he developed research on filial piety, a specific Chinese cultural value about child duties in families, in his general exam and dissertation. In his dissertation, he examined how filial piety values were potentially associated with Chinese parents’ parenting behaviors, and how these factors were related to children’s mental health and emotional well-being outcomes in two papers. Yuyang will soon start a new position as a postdoctoral scholar at East China Normal University and continue his research on filial piety.
Outside of his academic and work life, Yuyang enjoys exercise, martial arts, video games, and traveling.