I am interested in the underlying neural mechanisms and anatomical structures of patients with various neurological disorders. I plan to study brain mapping and neuroimaging techniques to gather detailed, personalized perspectives on structure and function.

Advisor: Brad Mahon

Jenah is a Ph.D. student working jointly with Drs. Lori Holt and Bonnie Nozari. She completed her M.S. in Psychology at Villanova University in 2021, working under Dr. Joe Toscano. Previously, she completed her B.A. in Psychology and Linguistics at the University of Iowa. Jenah is currently focused on examining how abstract knowledge about a discourse or an event influences low-level acoustic processing. When she’s not in the lab, you can usually find her indulging in her ferocious coffee habit, going on a power walk, or enjoying some quiet time with her two cats, Edmund and Sunny.

Advisor: Lori Holt & Bonnie Nozari

Katie is a Ph.D student in music cognition and cognitive neuroscience. She earned her Bachelor of Music in voice performance from Oberlin College Conservatory and her Masters in Business Administration with a focus on sustainability and process improvement from Bainbridge Graduate Institute (now part of Presidio Graduate School). Her research interests include spatial hearing and localization, proprioception and auditory cuing, and the neural correlates of learning new music, to name a few. Outside of research she enjoys time with her family, her dog, Nico, making music, walking, and baking.

Advisor: Barb Shinn-Cunningham & Abby Noyce

I am broadly interested in how brain networks organize across development to support cognitive behavior and perception. I am particularly interested in reorganization and plasticity in individuals with neurological disorders, injuries, and other disruptions to these processes, and I have a long-term goal of guiding clinical understanding, decision-making, and interventions through my research. I aim to integrate behavioral, neuroimaging, and neural recording methods to probe these questions. Within these interests, I am currently studying eye movements and visual processing in pediatric patients who have undergone cortical resection to treat epileptic seizures.

Advisor: Marlene Behrmann

I'm fascinated by cognitive development, particularly the complex interplay between attention, language, and memory. I am also passionate about translating these insights into practical applications through research-to-practice initiatives.

Advisor: Erik Thiessen

My research focuses broadly on the intersection of identity and health, with a particular emphasis on the LGBTQ+ community. More specifically, I am interested in exploring associations between social stressors and maladaptive coping behaviors, the role of identity in interpersonal interactions, family dynamics, and health-promoting behavior, and the reduction of bias, stereotyping, and prejudice.

Advisor: Mikey Trujillo

My research interests are in executive function, hearing loss, and speech comprehension. My area is cognitive science.

Advisor: Lori Holt & Barbara Shinn-Cunningham

I am broadly interested in how stressors related to discrimination and stigma may affect one’s biological and psychosocial development, and what protective factors may lead to improved coping abilities and resilience to negative health outcomes.

Advisor: Phoebe Lam

I am interested in the development of attention regulation and in applying this knowledge to educational domains.  I work collaboratively to understand performance on a task developed to measure Selective Sustained Attention in young children, the TrackIt paradigm, and additionally use that paradigm to probe the interplay of sustained attention with other cognitive systems.  For these projects, I consider children's accuracy, patterns of errors, and eye gaze.  My interest in the study of sustained attention has highlighted several conceptual and measurement issues in this construct.  I am working to analyze the designs, outcome measures, and patterns of performance of existing tasks of attention as these relate to the constructs of sustained attention and (separately) inhibition. I also serve as a Teaching Assistant for undergraduate psychology courses including Principles in Child Development and Research Methods in Developmental Psychology. 

To complement my training in the psychology department, I am involved in two ongoing program assessments in Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.  First, as a graduate assessment fellow on the Dietrich College Assessment Committee (Fall 2019, Spring 2020), I focused on program-level assessment of the college’s Statistical Thinking learning outcome.  As well, I am collaborating with a staff member from the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation to lead program assessment of oral communication, a subset of the college's Communication learning outcome. These opportunities allow me to apply learning from my participation in the Program for Interdisciplinary Education Research and to leverage my previous teaching experience.

I am interested in the cognitive mechanism and the neural mechanism that support the uniqueness of human intelligence. I plan to study the differences in reasoning between humans and non-human primates through behavioral experiments, neural imaging techniques, and computational modeling.

Advisors: Jessica Cantlon

My research interests broadly encompass examining the interactions, and relationships between modalities. More specifically, I am curious about the role of attention in cross-modal relationships that include auditory perception, and real life implications (e.g., vehicle warning systems) such interplay holds.

Advisor: Laurie Heller

My research interests include social factors that affect alcohol and tobacco addiction. In the future, I aim to empirically evaluate the social impact on the etiology and maintenance of substance use disorders through clinical research that can impact public policies, regulation of products, and prevention and treatment of problematic substance use behavior.

Advisor: Kasey Creswell

I'm studying the role of social interaction with caregivers in the development of communication and social cognition.

Advisor: Daniel Yurovsky

My research interests are motivated by use-inspired basic research. Specifically, how does our working memory - often studied with colorful squares and orientation lines - operate in everyday life? To explore and answer this question, I employ a mix of behavioral and neuroimaging techniques in my research program.

Advisor: Susanne Ferber

I am generally interested in using computational models (Bayesian statistics and machine learning methods) to study concept acquisition and inference in kids and adults.

Specifically, current research aims to explore the alignment of multi-modality conceptual systems. 

Advisor: Daniel Yurovsky