Felicia Lu is a doctoral student at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She aims to examine how the rise of AI-driven technologies are beginning to influence, create, and/or maintain parasocial relationships. Furthermore, she is interested in how such processes affect the psychological well-being of users when used as a source of emotional support and companionship, for better and for worse.

Felicia holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin with a minor in Educational Psychology. She continued her education at UT and received a Master of Arts in General Psychology. During her years of graduate study, she worked as a teaching assistant for various courses ranging from Psychological Methods and Statistics to Psychopathology. Moreover, she gained valuable experience working in a clinical setting as a graduate student therapist, where she utilized a Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) approach to treat anxiety-related disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

When she isn't shriveling within the clutches of academia, she can be found...diving right back into it. Specifically, Felicia enjoys researching fear systems and their maintenance factors as well as Ugaritic Mythos in her free time. Less bookish hobbies include creative writing, art, and video games. For the lattermost, she quite likes Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Honkai: Star Rail.