Alumni

Visiting Graduate Student, 2017

Elena Carbone was a P.h.D. student in University of Padova’s  Psychological Sciences course. She has a Master’s degree in Neuroscience and Neuropsychological Rehabilitation and a II-Level Short Specialization degree in Psychology of Aging, both from the University of Padova, Italy.

She is interested in: i) assessing the role of age and individual differences in both cognitive abilities (e.g. spatial abilities, working memory) and individuals’ attitude toward spatial tasks in explaining spatial navigation and route learning performance; ii) understanding whether it is possible to compensate, limit and slow down older adults’ cognitive age-related decline in spatial navigation and route learning abilities – particularly relevant for older adults’ purpose of living independently by moving around efficiently and reaching places – thanks to effective cognitive training.

(Former) Graduate Student

Masha Jones, Ph.D. was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow who studies the executive functions of children with learning and attention disorders. Her approaches include striving to enhance executive functioning through cognitive training and attempting to better understand how differences in cognitive ability may be leveraged in support of creativity for individuals with learning and attention disorders.

Masha is now a Research Associate at WestEd, contributing to their Learning Innovations Program.

(Former) Graduate Student
rkalinow@uci.edu

Robert Kalinowski was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.  My primary goal is to create children’s media of the type and scale of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”  I write and perform novel songs, stories, and other interventions targeted toward nurturing the young child.  I use these interventions to experimentally test the way children acquire key skills, such as early spatial and math skills, or, to look at it another way, I use the experiments to support the creation of the media interventions.  I also research the development of intelligence through the early school years.  My pride and joy is my small army of devoted undergraduate researcher volunteers, who enthusiastically collect data by directly assessing children in their preschools and who passionately contribute to my creative enterprise  (They all get “A’s”).

(Former) Lab Manager

Snigdha Kamarsu has a Bachelor of Science in Cognitive Neuroscience with a minor in Biology from UC Irvine. She enjoys learning about new cognitive measures and is interested in the neural pathways of memory. Snigdha plans to apply her knowledge from cognitive science to validate and implement new diagnostic assessments as a future neuropsychologist. When not at work in the lab, Snigdha enjoys reading, exploring new places, and learning new recipes.

Snigdha is now a project coordinator (Staff Research Associate 2) at University of California, San Diego’s Department of Psychiatry working to better understand how self awareness of a patient’s symptoms can affect their performance with tasks of independent living. This will aid Snigdha to becoming a robust clinician and a neuropsychologist in the near future.

(Former) Lab Manager
shireenk@uci.edu

Shireen received her Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences at UC Irvine. She is interested in understanding the pathophysiology of neurodevelopment disorders, such as ADHD. Shireen is now attending medical school, with the long-term goal of becoming a developmental-behavioral pediatrician.

(Former) Post-doc & collaborator

Aurora LePort was an Assistant Project Scientist at UC Irvine’s School of Education and Head of Research at grandPad Inc. Understanding what drives learning, memory and healthy aging have long since fascinated her. As a Ph.D. student, in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at UC Irvine, she became a pioneer in the field of Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory. Dr. LePort has shown how the brain and behavior, of a rare human population, may be contributing to exceptional autobiographical memory. Aurora was a Fellow with Data Incubator and she is now a Data Scientist at Verizon Wireless in Irvine.

(Former) Graduate Student & Postdoctoral Fellow

Grace Lin received her PhD at UC Irvine’s School of Education, specializing in both Learning, Cognition, and Development (LCD) and Language, Literacy, and Technology (LLT). She researches the interrelations among different areas of cognition and how games can be implemented to help people across the lifespan learn. She is driven by the potential application of cognitive research findings to educational settings and is particularly interested in measurement and playful assessments. Grace was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oregon, working on the IMPACT Measures Repository and EC PRISM teams in the Stress Neurobiology and Prevention Research Lab. She is now an Assessment Scientist at MIT’s Playful Journey Lab.

Visiting Graduate Student, 2015

María Jesús Maraver earned her Ph.D. from the Psychology Doctorate Program at the University of Granada (Spain) where she was a member of the Memory and Language Research Group. She was a visiting specialist at the UCI funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy. Her work is based on the hypothesis that interference control in memory and language is solved by means of inhibitory control mechanisms that suppress competing information. She aims to study whether cognitive training interventions may enhance inhibitory control mechanisms involved in working memory and reading comprehension processes.

(Former) Graduate Student
shafeem@uci.edu

Shafee Mohammed is an Optometrist by profession and did his undergraduate studies in India followed by clinical practice for a year and a half. During practice he came to understand the problems that arise in the daily lives of the visually impaired. As a doctoral student at UC Irvine’s School of Education, he aims to understand how visual stimulus aids in learning, how it contributes to working memory and how it alters in the visually impaired population. He is further interested in the potential benefits of cognitive training in improving working memory and learning of the visually impaired.

Shafee is now Dr. Mohammed.

(Former) Lab Manager

Austin Moon received his Bachelor of Science in Cognitive Neuroscience and Bachelor of Arts in Education with a minor in Psychology and Social Behavior at UC Irvine. His research interest is looking at intervention methods that improve cognition for people with early-onset epilepsy. Outside of lab, Austin loves going on long hikes, gets involved in environmental programs, and enjoys superhero movies.

Austin is now a graduate student in Neuroscience at the University of California, Riverside.

(Former) Lab Manager

Nina Ozbardakci received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests include child and adolescent development and psychopathology. In particular, she aims to focus on the study of cognitive functioning in young adults. Outside of lab, Nina enjoys baking sweets, reading memoirs, and experiencing live music.

Nina is now a part of the Survey Research Group at the RAND Corporation, where she works on various national projects to address public policy issues impacting populations across the lifespan.

(Former) Lab Manager

Chelsea was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, and she earned her Ph.D. at Chapman University in Computational and Data Science. Chelsea earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the UC San Diego with concentrations in Clinical and Behavioral Psychology. She loves statistics and education and will talk to you about linear models and ANOVAs any day. Her interests include exploring how to help people learn statistics more effectively and computational methods for behavioral sciences.

If you think stats is fun (or think you should think that) check out her blog or Youtube channel! In her free time, Chelsea enjoys reading, writing, yoga, and hiking.

(Former) Graduate Student
mrivas3@uci.edu

Mariela was a Ph.D. student in the UCI School of Education. She has a Master’s degree in Psychology from California State University, Los Angeles. Her work includes the application of cognitive theories of learning into instruction in higher education classrooms. A recent paper, with her Master’s advisor Ji Y. Son, was published in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology. Click here for a download link.

(Former) Collaborator

Teya is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Delaware.

(Former) Graduate Student

Emily Sumner was a PhD student in the Department of Cognitive Sciences interested in the development of risk-taking preferences. Her research focuses on 1) the development of the concepts underlying decision making, 2) creating methods to detect individual differences in risk propensity, and 3) the role that executive function plays into these individual difference. She is excited by the potential of creating cognitive training that will address these differences, and reduce risky behavior in special populations. She was also a member of the Sarnecka Cognitive Development Lab.

Emily is now a post-doc at UC Berkeley working with Alison Gopnik and Celeste Kidd.

(Former) Lab Manager

Francesca received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and minor in Applied Developmental Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is interested in studying the brain and environmental influences underlying children’s persistence, motivation, and self-regulation.

Francesca is now a graduate student at CU Boulder to earn her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology.

(Former) Graduate Student

Nancy Tsai received her Ph.D. at UC Irvine’s Education program with a specialization in Learning, Cognition, and Development (LCD). She hopes to apply her studies of Cognitive Neuroscience to inform the development and evaluation of interventions aimed to promote learning. As a doctoral student, Nancy examined the development of Executive Functions, the factors that foster or impair this development, and the programs aimed to improve it.

Nancy is now a post-doc working in the in the Neuroscience Research Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

(Former) Project Coordinator

Minnie Wu has a Bachelor of Science in Biology with minors in Psychology and Education from her hometown’s own UC Irvine. She is interested in neuropsychology and enjoys educational game design from many perspectives, including how to motivate people to learn and what goes into building games that are both helpful and fun. When not in the lab, Minnie enjoys writing fantasy, reading theology, and playing video games.

Minnie is now a PhD student at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science at UCI.

(Former) Graduate Student
elhamz@uci.edu

Elham earned her Ph.D. in the UCI School of Education, specializing in Learning, Teaching, Cognition, and Development. She received her B.S. in Cognitive Science from UCLA and her M.A. in Education from UCI. Elham’s research interests are centered around the intersection of education and cognitive science. Through her dissertation studies, Elham examined the metacognitive process underlying reading comprehension – comprehension monitoring – utilizing eye-movement methodology. She is also interested in developing effective technology-mediated learning tools to advance students’ reading comprehension and learning.