Yunzhi (Ariel) Zheng | 郑蕴之
Email: yzheng9@fsu.edu
Google Scholar: 📚
ResearchGate: 📖
Doctoral Candidate, Marriage and Family Therapy
Department of Human Development and Family Science
Florida State University
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Marriage and Family Therapy at Florida State University. My research examines how couples navigate difficult times together, especially the role of mindfulness in couple relationships. I am also interested in applying computational approaches in couple intervention research for new insights.
My work focuses on:
- Mindfulness in couple relationships
- Couples’ communication and coping under stress
- Computational methods in couple intervention research, including:
- Explainable AI-Assisted Measurement of Relational and Intervention Processes
- Responsible AI for Personalized Clinical Decision Support
I am also a practicing couple and family therapist and clinical supervisor-in-training, and my clinical work and my research continually informs one another.
Updated: 10/29/2026
News:
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10/28/2026: I am very excited that our Q-learning paper won the Best Paper Award in Family Therapy Section by NCFR!
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08/31/2026: I am incredibly grateful to the [Mental Research Institute] (https://mri.org/blog/tracing-co-rumination-in-couples-conversations-through-language-based-models-understanding-the-costs-and-benefits-of-co-rumination-at-scale) for awarding my dissertation project the Doctoral Dissertation Grant!
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08/07/2026: Our work (When Problem Talk Helps or Hurts the Relationship: Trait Mindfulness Profiles Moderate the Effects of Co-Rumination in Romantic Relationships) is covered by PsyPost.
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08/04/2026: I’m recruiting couples for my dissertation study about how partners talk about stress and support one another during conversations!
Participation involves: one-time in-person lab visit at FSU; questionnaires + two recorded conversations with your partner; about 90-120 minutes total. Participants will have the option to be compensated either through course extra credit or $20 gift card per person.
Eligibility: Both partners need to be at least 18 years old, primarily speak English at home, and in a committed romantic relationship for at least 6 months.
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07/31/2026: My submission to the 2026 NASPR Conference, “Automated Sentiment Analysis in Psychotherapy: Validation Against Human Coding and Dyadic Associations with Therapeutic Alliance” has been selected for a trainee conference travel award.
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07/23/2026: I was selected as the 2026 award recipient for the Ruth Hathaway Jewson Award by NCFR.