Meet our Research Team!
Dr. Maria D. Molina
MLG Lab Director
Maria D. Molina is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Advertising & Public Relations. She received her PhD in Mass Communications from Penn State University.
Maria studies online persuasion in the context of digital health, fake news, and online privacy using a combination of experimental and computational approaches. Currently, her research is centered around three main areas: 1) the role played by technological affordances in motivating positive, socially beneficial behaviors, 2) the role played by technological affordances in promoting the sharing of negative content, and 3) user responses to AI tools that act as sources of communication (e.g., filter user-generated content, create content on behalf of the user).
Taenyun Kim
Lab Coordinator
Taenyun is a PhD Candidate in Information and Media with a Cognitive Science Specialization at Michigan State University. He studies Human-AI Cooperation from a psychological perspective, exploring how to build trustworthy, morally aligned AI systems. At MLG, he leads and supports several projects, including research on how people perceive the authenticity of AI-generated apology messages and investigations into the mechanisms that motivate people to disclose personal information to AI.
Sofia Aparício
Researcher
Sofia is a PhD candidate in Advertising and Public Relations with a Cognitive Science specialization at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on how children and families engage with emerging technologies, particularly AI in education, digital well-being, and adaptive learning systems. She studies how communication processes, such as parental guidance, motivation, and media use, influence children’s learning and cognitive development in technology-rich environments. In the lab, she works on human–AI interaction projects that explore how people perceive, trust, and respond to AI systems in both everyday and educational settings.
Huajie Cao
Researcher
Jay (Huajie Cao) is a PhD student in Information and Media at Michigan State University. He studies Human-AI Interaction and Human-Robot Interaction with both qualitative and quantitative methods. At MLG, he leads and supports several projects, including research on how people’s self-disclosure behavior with AI, and the mechanism of response latency pattern of Chatbot.
Layla (Siru) Chen
Researcher
Layla is a PhD student in the Advertising and Public Relations department at Michigan State University. Her research explores the reciprocal relationships among identity, perceptions of communication technologies, and political information consumption and civic engagement. She is also interested in how physical places and local environments shape these dynamics. At MLG, Layla looks forward to engaging theoretical approaches in human–machine and human–computer interaction to deepen and expand her interdisciplinary scholarship.
Dayeoung Jang
Researcher
Alumni
- Emily (Zhan) Shuo (Now at North Dakota State University)
- Greg Rogel (Now at University of Kentucky)
- Ike Gogolin
- V Kumar
- Alva Nguyen
MLG Group 