Postdoctoral Research Fellows | Overview
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Wenkang 'Winko' An, PhD I received my Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2021, under the supervision of Prof. Barbara Shinn-Cunningham. My dissertation work sought to study the neural representation of human auditory attention. Specifically, I decoded attentional control from multimodal neuroimaging measures (EEG and fMRI) and fused the information in these modalities through a representational similarity analysis framework. In addition, I designed multiple auditory brain-computer interface paradigms, in which I decoded attention from single-trial EEG signals using machine learning. I joined the Nelson and Wilkinson Labs in 2021 as a Rosamund Stone Zander Translational Neuroscience Center Postdoctoral Fellow. My goals here are to understand the neural mechanism underlying impaired abilities in patients with a rare genetic condition, and build computational models that can reliably predict autism and developmental outcomes from EEG.
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Haerin Chung, PhD Haerin received her PhD. from University of Chicago in 2022, where she was a member of the Infant Learning and Development Laboratory at the Center for Early Childhood Research. At UChicago, her graduate work in Amanda Woodward’s lab focused on the link between infants' experience and perception of actions. She investigated the neural correlates that underlie infants’ perception of actions that are associated with infants' experience using an integration of EEG and behavioral methods. Here at the LCN, Haerin seeks to explore the developmental changes in EEG measures, including the trajectory of functional connectivity, of those with, without, and at-risk for autism. Haerin is also interested in understanding how early indices of EEG are associated with different social-cognitive outcomes later in development.
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Caitlin Clements, PhD I joined the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience (LCN) in 2020 as a fellow in the Translational Postdoctoral Training Program in Neurodevelopment. I received my PhD in Psychology (with Clinical Training, child track) from the University of Pennsylvania under the mentorship of Robert Schultz, PhD. My doctoral work focused on autistic symptoms in 22q11.2 Duplication and Deletion Syndromes, reward processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and the psychometrics of cognitive assessment in individuals with ASD. During graduate school, I also completed a Fulbright grant in Sweden at the Karolinska Institutet Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics where I studied genome-wide association approaches to understanding psychiatric genetics. At the LCN, I am studying the development of reward processing and social cognition in young children with rare genetic disorders or at risk for ASD using EEG and other tools. My favorite part of my job is working with families, and clinically I have expertise in ASD, anxiety, OCD, ADHD, and managing challenging behaviors.
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Caroline Kelsey, PhD I received my Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Virginia in 2020, under the supervision of Dr. Tobias Grossmann. My dissertation research explored the role of the gut microbiota in infant brain and behavioral development. As part of my research, I used functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to characterize resting state functional brain networks in newborn babies. I was thrilled to join the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience in 2020. Here, I work on an ongoing longitudinal project examining neural, cognitive, and behavioral predictors of emotion processing. I am interested in using fNIRS and eye-tracking to identify early-emerging markers of later social-emotional functioning.
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Ran Wei, PhD Prior to joining the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience (LCN) in the fall of 2021, I received my Ph.D. in Human Development, Learning and Teaching from Harvard University under the mentorship of Dr. Meredith Rowe. Situated at the crossroad of psychology, linguistics, and early childhood education, my doctoral research investigates how the family environment, especially caregivers’ communicative input and beliefs, shapes young children’s language and cognitive development. I have used a wide range of modalities and paradigms (such as eye tracking, behavioral experiments, fine-grained analyses of verbal and nonverbal communication) to examine how early language acquisition unfolds across cultures and languages. My current research in the LCN focuses on understanding the neural circuitry underlying infants’ and toddlers’ executive functions (EF) and identifying the home environment factors that contribute to EF development.
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Lisa Yankowitz, PhD I received my PhD in Psychology with Clinical Training from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020, working under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Schultz. My doctoral research had two arms. In the first, I investigated structural brain differences associated with autism, and applied newly developed methods to examine the nature of structural differences. The second arm of my research examined infant vocalizations (e.g., crying, babbling, laughing) in infants at high risk for autism. I identified features of vocalizations which differ in the first year of life in autism and associated these with functional connectivity (as measured by fMRI). I completed my predoctoral clinical internship at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. I was thrilled to join the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience in 2020 as a Clinical-Research Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Boston Children’s Hospital. Here, I work in the Wilkinson and Nelson labs, and am interested in identifying early predictors of autism using EEG and behavioral measures.
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