Tirza Ben Ari comes to the Psych & Law program straight from her OPT year with the Queens District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit, where she worked directly with ADAs, analyzing claims of wrongful conviction. Tirza graduated with an M.A. in Forensic Psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Her Master’s thesis, guided by Dr. Louis Schlesinger, was done in collaboration with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit Lab and focused on the crime scene behaviors of sexual murderers. During her Master’s, Tirza served as a committee member of the Master’s Students Research Group, for which she received a peer mentoring award. Among other scholarships, she completed the OSRC Research/Creativity scholarship program, in which she conducted a study of public perceptions of confession under the mentorship of Dr. Saul Kassin. She presented her findings at AP-LS 2022. She is excited to pursue her Ph.D. with Dr. Kassin and continue her work as a member of his Lab.