Mirena has recently joined BGU as a lecturer in Psychology. Her PhD investigating how/if a dog-assisted intervention in the classroom helps children with various special needs develop. Mirena has broad research interests including animal-assisted interventions across the lifespan, for children and people with various special needs as well as for clinical groups such as people with mental health issues. Another area of interest is child language development and communication for typically developing toddlers and children and those with special needs. Mirena has conducted research investigating the effectiveness of the integrated 2-year review. Prior to starting her PhD Mirena has worked as an Applied Behaviour Analysis Tutor and Senior Tutor in the South East. During this post Mirena provided a child-specific one-to-one intervention targeting areas of development children had deficits in such as play skills, self help and academic skills.