EDRG Staff

Our Early Development Research Group staff coordinate between our seven centers and communicate with families about participating with us. Read below about our amazing staff members.

Recruitment Coordinator

Eddie Kim

Pronouns: He/Him/His

Eddie recently completed his B.Sc in Behavioural Neuroscience in 2024. During his undergraduate studies, he became involved with the EDRG by working at the Centre for Cognitive Development as a research assistant, where he also developed his own study investigating memory in adults and confidence in recalling fluent versus disfluent (umm's, uhh's) auditory information. Eddie has also worked at the Visual Neuroscience Lab at BC Children's Hospital, where he explored a machine learning approach to classifying developmental disorders based on brain network patterns. As the Recruitment Coordinator, Eddie is responsible for managing shared resources between the seven centres and developing recruitment initiatives to promote studies at the EDRG. Enthusiastic about engaging with parents and families, Eddie is always happy to answer any questions about participating in studies at the centres. In his free time, Eddie enjoys playing basketball, volleyball, and baseball.

Contact: earlydev(at)psych.ubc.ca

Hospital Recruiter

Lucia Youka Munoz Murakami

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

Lucia completed her H.B.Sc as a Psychology Specialist student at the University of Toronto in 2021. During her undergraduate degree, she previously worked with the Biopsychosocial Investigations of Gender Laboratory (BIG Lab) as a Research Assistant under Dr. Doug P. VanderLaan; where she was the first author of a published study that assessed whether a Child Behavior Checklist 10-item screener could investigate the association between Autism Spectrum Disorder and Childhood Gender Variance in non-clinical populations. Lucia is excited about working as Hospital Recruiter for the Early Development Research Group (EDRG). She visits mothers in the Children’s hospital maternity wards to recruit newborns and their older siblings for EDRG studies and is overjoyed in gaining more experience in developmental psychology research. In her free time, Lucia enjoys various hobbies such as stand-up paddle boarding, hiking, fantasy adventure novels and shows and baking.