Shae DiNino is a joint postdoc in the labs of Lori Holt and Barb Shinn-Cunningham. She received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Washington and her B.A. and M.A. in Psychology from San Diego State University. Shae’s research focuses on auditory perception in adults who have experienced high levels of noise exposure. When not in the lab, Shae likes watching live music (with earplugs!) and taking her dog on outdoor adventures.

Sahil is a postdoctoral researcher in the Holt Lab. He received his PhD in Psychological Sciences from the University of Connecticut in 2021. Sahil’s research focuses on the cognitive and neural mechanisms that support speech perception, and he is specifically interested in how listeners leverage different sources of information (their knowledge of who is talking, their knowledge of what someone is likely to say in some given context, etc.) to guide their interpretation of the acoustic signal. Outside of the lab, Sahil enjoys books, baking and boxing, as well as things that don’t start with the letter B.

My own research falls into two general areas, the first of which is neuroimaging of neurological functioning, psychosocial distress, and psychiatric diseases. In particular the use of MRI to study brain structure and functioning in psychiatric disorders, sleep, stress, and injury. The second is cognitive and behavioral health, including psychiatric disorders, in aerospace medicine. I have a strong focus on the effects of spaceflight stressors including isolation, confinement, limited sleep, high workloads, microgravity, and radiation on the brain, cognition, and behavior. This includes work on mental healthcare in remote environments and of high-achieving populations.

Outside of my own research, a large focus of my work is in establishing and running shared research facilities in a range of environments from university and hospital based labs, to remote scientific facilities including Antarctic research bases and the International Space Station. I played a key role in the creation and operations of the Behavioral Health & Performance (BHP) Laboratory and the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) at NASA Johnson Space Center, as well as a research facility for the Center for Understanding Biology using Imaging Technology (CUBIT) of the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University.

Areas of Expertise

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Health Neuroscience
• Neuropsychology
• Neuroimaging

My current research examines how people think about, discuss, and engage with their social world across behavioral, ecological, and neural levels. Moreover, I am interested in how these thoughts of the social world provide an ecologically valid foundation for understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying conceptual association at the individual and group level.

Specifically, I am interested in how peoples' thoughts and feelings (i.e., conceptual associations) involving their societal environment (e.g., healthcare, voting) and social groups within that environment (e.g., race, gender, social economic status) influence their decision to engage with services their society provides and their treatment of people of differing social identities.

The fundamental goal of this body of research aims to identify data-driven patterns of thinking and behavior to illuminate societally systemic and neural mechanisms that contribute to social thought, conceptual associations, and decision making.

I am currently a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow (2022-2023 cohort) working with both the Cognitive Axon Lab (CoAx) and the Data Driven Diversity Lab (D3) and have served on the Psychology departmental Diversity & Inclusion board as well as co-founded the Diverse Recruitment committee to spearhead college-wide graduate recruitment efforts from underrepresented groups.