Maliki “Kiki” Ghossainy, Ph.D.

UT Austin alumna, Maliki “Kiki” Ghossainy, PhD, discusses her first job after her PhD program, the most interesting project she has worked on, and the strategy that was most effective in helping her to transition from PhD to statistical consulting.

Maliki Eyvonne Ghossainy is a psychological scientist and statistician. In 2016, she completed her Ph.D in Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research integrates social, cognitive, cultural, and biological mechanisms into a model of belief formation across the early childhood years. Using mixed methods designs, Maliki studies the sophisticated ways in which children judiciously evaluate different sources of information. Maliki’s research emphasizes the importance of studying children’s cognition in context, and her recent studies investigate the role of linguistic input in the epistemic judgements of multilingual children.

While working on her doctoral degree, Maliki also completed an M.S. in Statistics and was one of five students to be selected as a Graduate Fellow in Statistics at UT Austin in 2014. In addition to being an experienced researcher, Maliki is also an active statistical consultant and has worked with clients from a variety of fields (e.g., academic and non-academic settings, private and public sectors) to design surveys, analyze data, offer technical trainings, and report findings to relevant stakeholders. Maliki also teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in Developmental Psychology, Research Design, and Statistical Methods for social sciences. Presently, Maliki is a Senior Research Scientist at Boston University.