Ka is an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota Institute of Child Development. His research focuses on the development of emotion regulation in typical and at-risk populations, examining the ways that cultural contexts shape emotion regulation, and how early adversity, racism and social determinants of health “get under the skin” to confer risk and resilience for the development of mental health problems among children and adolescents, especially among racial-ethnic minoritized and immigrant families.
Dr. Ip is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Institute of Child Development (ICD). Dr Ip is proud to be a first-generation immigrant and to have begun his academic career at a community college. He obtained his PhD in Clinical and Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan and was a Susan-Nolen Hoeksema Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University before joining ICD. He is the currently the director of the D.A.N.C.E. (Development, Affective Neuroscience, Culture & Environment) Lab studying culture, children and adolescents’ mental health and the developing brain. His research focuses a) on typical and atypical emotion regulation development, b) examining the ways that cultural contexts shape emotion regulation, and c) how early adversity, structural racism and social determinants of health may “get under the skin” to confer risk and resilience for developmental psychopathology and health disparities, especially among children and adolescents from immigrant and racial-ethnic minoritized backgrounds. His career goal is to use this knowledge to inform social policy that aims to reduce racial-ethnic inequalities and advance health equity, and to optimize timing of interventions.