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Diksha is a fifth-year student in UMD’s School Psychology PhD program. Although her nuclear family is North Indian, she grew up in South India, in an interfaith monastery, and the UAE. She moved to Philadelphia to study for undergraduate degrees in Business and Creative Writing, and then her MS.Ed. degree in Quantitative Methods and Human Development (counseling concentration), all at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research breadth includes designing surveys to evaluate community programs; doing qualitative and quantitative work for community-based research projects; and analyzing large datasets such as the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) for policy decisions. While she has been doing school and community-based work since 2010, her current research and intervention interests include mitigating the links between inter- and intra-group conflict, mental health and social issues, via methods like community outreach, no-cost resource provision and facilitating intergroup dialogue. She strives to take a holistic, contextual and ecologically sensitive approach in her work, also seeking to consistently grow and learn to better serve others' needs. Her current grants and projects hopefully reflect this.

Finally, Diksha has been practicing meditation techniques, yoga asana, and Eastern philosophies, which are now used and studied as interventions in Psychology, since she was a toddler. She has facilitated conversations in the broader field of Psychology to help people talk more about the South and East Asian philosophies underlying many mindfulness-based practices popularized worldwide today. Being cognizant of the guiding philosophies, native practice indications and limitations of many mind-body techniques may help one increase one’s depth and breadth of study, practice and cross-cultural understanding, improving the holistic benefits one and others may receive. She wishes nothing but the best for everyone reading her profile here. She is happy to build partnerships with others around common interests and/or try to support other students in their graduate school journeys; please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn or via email whenever relevant. Please take good care.