Sunny Sun is a research analyst with the child welfare research area, working primarily with the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative. She graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park with a degree in Psychology and a minor in Global Poverty. Her primary research objective focuses on improving outcomes for underprivileged populations. She is particularly interested in how socioeconomic status and racial/ethnic inequalities impact mental health and help-seeking behaviors and applications of psychology to the legal and criminal justice systems.

During her time as an undergraduate, Sunny was a research assistant for the Maryland Psychotherapy Clinic and Research Lab, where she worked on a senior thesis assessing the role of intake sessions in counseling. Her senior research project evaluated the relationship between stress and environmental context on eyewitness identification accuracy.

In the future, Sunny plans to pursue a graduate degree in clinical psychology.