Milan is a Research Mentor at Rising Researchers who guides students with patience, clear strategy, and individualized support as they develop meaningful research projects. He helps students identify authentic academic interests, communicate their work with confidence, and jumpstart their journey into sophisticated research.

Location:
Toronto, Ontario

Education:
PhD, Developmental Psychology and Education, University of Toronto
MA, Developmental Psychology and Education, University of Toronto
Honours B.Sc., Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Toronto

Bio:
Milan holds a PhD and MA in Developmental Psychology and Education from the University of Toronto, as well as an Honours B.Sc. in Psychology and Cognitive Science. His research examines how people develop understanding and how emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), can support learning without replacing the active thinking that meaningful learning requires. Across eight years of research, he has designed and led empirical studies involving more than 1,000 participants and has used quantitative, qualitative, and machine-learning methods to study learning, cognition, and human-AI interaction.

Alongside his research, Milan has several years of experience supporting high school and university students. As the founder of an independent academic coaching practice and previously as an Academic Strategist at Evoke Learning, he has helped students strengthen research skills, critical thinking, analytical writing, planning, and executive functioning. His mentoring approach emphasizes structure, patience, and helping students become more independent and confident in their own thinking.

At Rising Researchers, Milan draws on this background to guide students from developing a research question through study design, analysis, scientific writing, and communication of findings. For students pursuing BS/MD, pre-med, or medical school pathways, he focuses on helping them build a genuine and intellectually coherent research experience that they can explain confidently as part of their academic profile, rather than treating research as a box to check.

Milan’s Research Focus:

• Learning, understanding, and educational psychology
• Human-AI interaction and artificial intelligence in education
• Machine learning and multimodal behavioral analysis
• Research methods, scientific writing, and research communication

Milan’s Teaching Activity:

• Founder & Academic Coach, Insighted
• Academic Strategist, Evoke Learning
• Practicum Supervision – University of Toronto

Scholarly Activity
Lazic, M., & Woodruff, E. (2026). Acoustic Correlates of Phases of Understanding in a Naturalistic Literary Task. Electronics, 15(12), 2700. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15122700
Lazic, M., & Woodruff, E. (2026). Boundary Conditions for AU-Based Detection of Understanding: A Literary Analysis Study. Electronics, 15(10), 2059. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15102059
Lazic, M., Jun, J., & Woodruff, E. (2026). From Learned Helplessness to Authentic Dialogue: Rethinking AI, Consciousness, and Education. In Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112206393-010
Lazic, M., Woodruff, E., & Jun, J. (2025). The Next Generation of Personalized Educational AI: Integrating Emotion and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-82915-4_4
Lazic, M., Woodruff, E., & Jun, J. (2025). Decoding subjective understanding: Using biometric signals to classify phases of understanding. AI, 6(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.3390/ai6010018
Jun, J., Lazic, M., & Woodruff, E. (2025). The influence of conscientiousness and context on the emotional response during understanding. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1589709. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1589709