GRADUATE STUDENTS
Ph.D. CANDIDATES
| Eric 's research interests include examining the differences in how younger and older adults process emotional information. Eric is finishing up a project in how divided attention tasks may affect younger and older adults’ attention and memory for positive and negative emotional information |
Area: Social Development
Lab: Emotion Lab
Advisor: Derek Isaacowitz
Location: Volen 304
Email: esa@brandeis.edu
Phone: 781-736-3240
Undergraduate Institution:
University of Sioux Falls
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Kelly Cotter
Area: Social Development Lab: Sherman Lab Advisor: Aurora Sherman Location: Brown 104 Email: kcotter@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3251 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Kelly is interested in Health Psychology, including the adoption and maintenance of exercise behavior. Kelly is also interested in how social relationships, self-efficacy, age, and chronic illness affect exercise. Kelly is currently researching and comparing theoretical health behavior change models in preparation for her dissertation on the maintenance of exercise behavior.
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Maolong Cui Advisor: Jozsef Fiser Undergraduate Institution: |
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Henry Galperin
Area: Cognitive Neuroscience Lab: Fiser Lab Advisor: József Fiser Location: Volen 242 Email: hgalp@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3271 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Henry's research focuses on identifying the visual structures and dynamical tuning processes humans use to perceive their natural environment by using classical psychophysics along with eye-tracking systems and large-size displays. He is currently researching what role higher order correlations among basic scene attributes, such as orientation and contrast, may play in visual perception. He is also interested in the neural correlates of visual perception and stimulus coding.
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Jane Harries
Area: Social Development Lab: Knight Lab Advisor: Ray Knight Location: Brown 5 Email: jharries@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3298 Undergraduate Institution: |
| Jane is interested in looking at the developmental factors of psychopathology. Currently, she is studying a group of juvenile sex offenders to see if there are similarities in the circumstances that they encountered growing up, in order to make inferences about possible predictors of their sexual aggression. |
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Amanda Hemmesch
Area: Social Development Lab: Zebrowitz Lab Advisor: Leslie Zebrowitz Location: Brwon 2 Email: arh@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3254 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Amanda's focus in on improving health, well-being, and quality of life for older adults. She is interested in how illness and psychosocial factors (especially personality and social relations) influence development and well-being throughout adulthood. Her current research examines interpersonal perception and social relations in the context of Parkinson's disease. Amanda's past work has included research examining psychosocial influences of pain and well-being for individuals with osteoarthritis, as well as research regarding social preferences across the life span. |
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Jie Huang Area: Cognitive Neuroscience Lab: The Vision Lab Advisor: Robert Sekuler Location: Volen 242 Email: jiehuang@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3266 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Jie is interested in how we are able to imitate actions and gestures that we see, and how memory effects the sequential action imitation. Another area of interest is human's navigation behavior. Currently, she is working on a new way finding project in the virtual museum, on how people act with the help of their former mental map of the space in the memory, also regarding the task, the time pressure and other social interactions. She is still exploring her future research focus.
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Eileen Kranz
Area: Social Development Lab: Lifespan Lab Advisor: Margie Lachman Location: Brown 104 Email: ekranz@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3251 Undergraduate Institution: |
| Eileen is interested in studying factors which influence the quality of life in adults across the lifespan. Her current focus is how personality predicts cognitive functioning and the mechanisms which have the greatest impact in protecting healthy older adults from cognitive decline. She hopes to expand her research to examine long term continuity and change in personality, how personality stability moderates the rate of decline in cognitive function, and also how individual personality traits interact with one another to predict cognitive ability in relation to the aging process. |
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Mary Jo Larcom
Area: Social Development Lab: Emotion Lab Advisor: Derek Isaacowitz Location: Volen 304 Email: mjlarcom@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3240 Undergraduate Institution: |
| Mary Jo's research interests include looking at the links between attention and emotion regulation in older adults. She is currently completing a project where she examined whether or not older individuals use attentional biases to positive emotional information to regulate their moods |
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Hyeon-Nyeon Lee
Area: Social Development Lab: Gutchess Lab Advisor: Angela Gutchess Location: Brown 319 Email: hnlee@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3248 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Mina Lehmann
Area: Cognitive Neuroscience Lab: Graybiel Lab Advisor: Paul DiZio Location: Rabb Email: lehmann@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-2033 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Susan Letourneau
Area: Cognitive Neuroscience Lab: Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center Advisor: Teresa Mitchell Email: susanl@brandeis.edu Undergraduate Institution: |
| Susan's research is focused on the development and plasticity of face perception. She is using behavioral studies, event-related potentials, and eye-tracking to examine the development of face recognition and emotional face perception in children, and to compare these skills in hearing and deaf adults. She hopes to learn about how the face perception system changes with age and with different types of experience (such as experience with a signed language). |
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Xiaolan Li
Area: Cognitive Neuroscience Lab: Graybiel Lab Advisor: Paul Dizio Location:: Rabb Email: lan@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3033 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Danielle Leblanc Maurice Undergraduate Institution: |
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Scott Motyka Advisor: Joseph Cunningham Location: Lemberg 101 Email: smotyka@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3281 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Kymberlee O'Brien
Area: Social Development Lab: Wingfield Lab Advisor: Arthur Wingfield Location: Volen 356 Email: kmaxine@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3280 Undergraduate Institution: |
| Kymberlee is interested in psychophysiological responses associated with stress, coping, and overall health behavior throughout the lifespan. Some of her research questions include the physiological, social, and personality factors that predict healthy life style choices, as well as antecedents of long term cognitive and psychological health. She is also interested in variables such as control beliefs, socioeconomic factors, exercise, and social support as they relate to lifespan health and well-being. Finally, she is interested in the research that defines resilience: what are the personality factors that contribute to resiliency, and what are the effects of psychological resiliency in the etiology of physical and mental disease. |
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Michael Polito
Location: Brown 319
Undergraduate Institution: |
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Emily Schmidt
Area: Social Development Lab: Cunningham Lab Advisor: Joseph Cunningham Location: Lemberg 101a Email: eschmidt@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3293 Undergraduate Institution: |
| Emily's research interests include the perception of emotion in human and non-human stimuli including body movement, facial expressions, body postures, and abstract images. She is also interested in individual and gender differences in the development of emotion cue processing and emotion cue encoding competencies in childhood and adulthood. Her current project examines how measures of emotion decoding ability and emotional intelligence predict performance in decoding emotion cues in body movement. |
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Michael Sheehan
Area: Social Development Lab: Watson Lab Advisor: Malcolm Watson Location: Mailman 101 Email: sheehan@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3252 Undergraduate Institution: |
| Mike's current research involves children who exhibit both bully and victim behaviors ("bully-victims"), with particular focus on how their behavior is affected by the home environment (and vice versa). He has also studied the reciprocal effects over time between parental discipline techniques and child/adolescent aggression. |
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Michael Strom
Area: Social Development Lab: Zebrowitz Lab Advisor: Leslie Zebrowitz Location: Brown 17 Email: stromm@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3248 Undergraduate Institution: |
| Michael is interested in person perception, particularly in the evaluation process. His past research focused on the attractiveness bias, where individuals tend to view attractive targets as possessing a number of positive characteristics. Currently, he is looking at what other qualities of faces lead to positive and negative evaluations, and whether these evaluations differ by gender or cultural background. |
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Heather Wadlinger
Area: Social Development Lab: Emotion Lab Advisor: Derek Isaacowitz Location: Volen 304 Email: samadhi@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3297 http://people.brandeis.edu/~samadhi/ Undergraduate Institution: |
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Cai Xing
Area: Social Development Lab: Emotion Lab Advisor: Derek Isaacowitz Location: Volen 304 Email: cxing@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3297 Undergraduate Institution: |
| Cai is interested in studying the interplay between emotion, attention and decision-making. Her dissertation focuses on how specific emotions influence attentional pattern and information processing in decision-making process. She is also interested in examining how attentional training could influence information processing strategies. |
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Jeongsook Yoon Undergraduate Institution: |
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Jeongsook is interested in studying the cognitive deficiencies associated with sexual aggression. Her current project is to investigate the attentional deficiencies that sexually aggressive males show when they are emotionally aroused. She is also interested in developmental antecedents of sexual aggression as etiological factors, particularly in conjunction with psychopathy dimension.
Her future research will be to investigate the developmental factors that contribute to the psychopathic component in sexual aggressors and how they correlate with their distorted cognitive schema. |
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Yi "Eyleen" Zhang
Area: Social Development Lab: Zebrowitz Lab Advisor: Leslie Zebrowitz Location: Brown 17 Email: yizhang@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3278 Undergraduate Institution: |
| Eyleen's main interest is to study the neural mechanisms of face perception. She is currently involved in the project of investigating the perception of faces of different social categories using functional neuroimaging techniques. She is also interested in the formation of first impression and people's behavioral tendencies toward faces. |
Master's Degree Candidates
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Brian Gold Advisor: Robert Sekuler Location: Volen 242 Email: bjgold@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3266 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Nayla Hamdi Advisor: Raymond Knight Location: Lemberg 115 Email: nayla@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3285 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Megan Limbert Advisor: Angela Gutchess Location: Brown 318 Email: mlimbert@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3280 Undergraduate Institution: |
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J. Michele Medlin Advisor: Malcolm Watson Location: Mailman 104b Email: medlin@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3307 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Chandra Murphy Advisor: Margie Lachman Location: Mailman 104b Email: chandra@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3256 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Raseeka Premchander Advisor: Xiaodong Liu Location: Brown 318 Email: raseekap@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3280 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Emily Strang Advisor: Joseph Cunningham Location: Lemberg 115 Email: estrang@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3285 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Ruoxue Wang Advisor: Leslie Zebrowitz Location: Brown 318 Email: imruoxue@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3280 Undergraduate Institution: |
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Jiong Yang Advisor: Ellen Wright Location: Lemberg 115 Email: jy17@brandeis.edu Phone: 781-736-3285 Undergraduate Institution: |