Taylor West is a doctoral candidate in the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory (a.k.a., the PEP Lab) under the mentorship of Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, within the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her undergraduate and master’s degree in psychology at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. Her research centers on whether and how high-quality interactions with strangers and acquaintances contributes to individual and community flourishing. Taylor’s work is highly interdisciplinary and collaborative and attempts to bridge positive psychology and emotion science to a range of domains and disciplines including economic inequality, intergroup conflict, culture, organizational psychology, affective neuroscience, and psychoneuroimmunology. Research she has led has been published in top academic journals in her field including Emotion, Mindfulness, and Affective Science.