Current Fellows

Hannah Davies graduated with highest honors from Brandeis University in May 2022 with a M.Sc. in Neuroscience, a B.Sc. in Neuroscience and Psychology and a minor in Chemistry. During her undergraduate studies, Hannah worked as a research assistant in the Knight’s Laboratory studying the association of various childhood traumas with dissociative symptoms in borderline personality disorder and volunteered as a clinical research assistant at the VA Medical Center in Jamaica Plain studying the impact of exercise on relieving Parkinsonism symptomatology. Hannah performed her graduate research and honors thesis under Dr. Paul DiZio in the Ashton Graybiel Spatial Orientation Laboratory (AGSOL), where she conducted several experiments examining the mechanisms behind visual balancing after omitting position and/or motion visual cues. Outside of research, Hannah coordinated the “SPECTRUM” volunteer program at Brandeis University, providing families with mentoring, tutoring, and group play opportunities for their children with developmental disabilities.

As a Cohen fellow, Hannah uses eye-tracking technology to assess social visual engagement in all children, both typically developing and those with, and at elevated likelihood of having, autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Working as a research coordinator on the FirstFocus Study, she will be conducting eye-tracking sessions at pediatricians’ offices to determine the effectiveness of a newly FDA-approved portable eye-tracking device on predicting developmental outcomes. Hannah is also researching how ASD recurrence rates in younger siblings change over time with the emergence of new ASD research findings. After finishing the Cohen fellowship, Hannah plans to pursue a MD/PhD to become a physician-scientist.

Jamie Kortanek graduated summa cum laude from Carleton College in 2022 with a B.A. in Psychology and distinction in the major. At Carleton, they worked in the Meerts Behavioral Neuroscience Lab, using a rat model to explore neural, hormonal, and experiential factors that affect female sexual function. They also worked in the Primate Cognition Lab at Carleton, exploring the relationship between Alzheimer’s-like neuropathology and cognitive decline in cotton-top tamarins. Additionally, with support from an undergraduate research fellowship, Jamie investigated early developmental concerns in children with 22q11.2 copy number variants within the Jeste Lab at UCLA.

Jamie has worked extensively with neurodivergent individuals as a volunteer, camp counselor, and direct support professional. As a younger sibling of someone with autism, Jamie has a deep passion for supporting autistic individuals/families in achieving their goals and managing challenging behaviors/environments. Jamie is also passionate about advancing precision medicine approaches to autism-related challenges through social neuroscience research. As a Cohen Fellow, Jamie assists with the collection of neuroimaging data for infants, school-aged children, and adults with and without autism. They also collect eye-tracking data, both alone and concurrently with fMRI, to explore social visual engagement and its neural underpinnings in autism and in typical development. Jamie is currently investigating whether symptom profiles in autistic children can predict aspects of early development in their younger siblings, such as social behavior and adaptive functioning. They also plan to explore whether symptom profiles of older siblings are associated with measures of white matter integrity in younger siblings. After their time at Marcus, Jamie intends to pursue a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology and possibly a Master's in Applied Behavior Analysis.

Originally from Istanbul, Turkey, Alp Köksal graduated with highest honors from Brown University in 2022 with a B.A. in Biology and Music. During his undergraduate studies, he worked as a research assistant at the Fallon Lab focusing on the Muscle-Specific Kinase-Bone Morphogenic Protein pathways, specifically focused on developing treatment models inducing adult hippocampal neurogenesis against Alzheimer’s Disease. His work on the characterization of memory, locomotion, and anxiety in a mouse model of increased hippocampal neurogenesis culminated in his honors thesis. He worked with The Miracle Project of New England, which provides after-school and summer activities for children and young adults on the spectrum through music, dance and theater therapy, as a co-actor and an administrative assistant.

As a Cohen Fellow, Alp is working as a research coordinator for the FirstFocus Study, which aims to work with pediatrician’s offices in Atlanta to bring the MAC-ID eye-tracking device into the community and establish it as a diagnostic tool for ASD. Additionally, he is interested in investigating the emergence of social smiling in infants, as well as music cognition in autistic and typically-developing children. After his time at Marcus, Alp would like to pursue a medical degree.

Ainsley Buck graduated with distinction from Duke University in 2022 with a B.S. in Neuroscience and certificate in Child Policy Research. While at Duke, Ainsley was a research assistant in the Duke Early Experience and the Developing Brain (DEED) Lab and a student researcher on the Duke Bass Connections North Carolina Early Childhood Action Plan team. In the DEED lab, she studied factors associated with early mood and developmental disorders using neuroimaging, dyadic head-mounted eye-tracking, and parent behavioral reports. Ainsley also conducted her honors thesis at the DEED Lab, where she investigated the relationship between functional connectivity in the brain at rest and non-clinical anxiety in young children using fMRI. Through Bass Connections, Ainsley contributed to three year-long projects, focusing respectively on social-emotional health screening, food insecurity, and housing insecurity in early childhood. She also received a grant from the Bass Connections team, allowing her to conduct independent qualitative research on inequities in early childhood autism services in North Carolina. Outside of research, Ainsley is a Registered Behavior Technician and has worked with toddlers with autism and other developmental delays to provide behavioral therapy.

As a Cohen Fellow, Ainsley engages in eye-tracking research to study differences in social development in typically developing children and children at risk for, and with, autism. She is currently involved in a project focusing on recurrence rates of autism in younger siblings of children with autism and is particularly interested in investigating driving factors behind changes in clinicians’ diagnoses of these siblings over time. Following Marcus, Ainsley plans to pursue a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology with a focus on improving early childhood evaluations of children with autism.

Brooke Schirmer graduated from the University of Rochester in 2020 with a B.S. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, a B.A. in Psychology with honors in research and a minor in American Sign Language. As an undergraduate, she worked in Dr. Loisa Bennetto’s Developmental Neuropsychology lab studying the neurocognitive bases of autism. She pursued an independent honors thesis examining the impact of communication abilities on emotion dysregulation and frustration in children with autism spectrum disorder. She also worked at Mt. Hope Family Center, working with children from underserved backgrounds who have experienced trauma, and children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

As an Education Science Research Fellow, Brooke explores observational data from our inclusion preschool at Marcus, as well as eye tracking data. She is interested in learning more about the factors that influence a child’s success in the classroom, both children with and without autism. In the future, Brooke hopes to pursue a PhD in clinical psychology.

Chris Nicholson graduated from Emory University with a B.S. in Quantitative Sciences in the Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology track and a Spanish minor. As an undergraduate, Chris worked on several different research projects, initially investigating oxidative phosphorylation dysfunction in rare mitochondrial diseases at the Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Research at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Chris continued developing his passion for genetics at CHOP through a project establishing the efficacy of Oxford Nanopore Sequencing, a new and more powerful method to sequence repetitive regions of the genome. He also worked in the Autism Spectrum Program of Excellence at Penn Medicine, where he analyzed the accuracy of genetic sequencing in genomes of families with autistic children. Chris’s undergraduate research culminated in a clinical research project at the Emory Autism Center where he co-created a questionnaire designed to screen for autism in adults via Zoom.

As a Simons Fellow, Chris is interested in the neural and genetic underpinnings that underlie the development of ASD. He hopes to investigate the dynamic topology of the developing infant brain in both typically-developing and autistic children as well as the brain structure, clinical phenotype, and genetic information of individuals with a 3q29 deletion. Following the fellowship, Chris plans to pursue a doctoral degree in either Neuroscience or Clinical Psychology, with a focus on teaching and computationally robust research methods.

Manash Sahoo graduated from Indiana University-Bloomington in 2020 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology. In his undergrad, he worked as a research assistant in the Smith Cognitive Development Lab investigating how low-level scene statistics (such as contrast and spatial frequency) tune and train early infant vision. In the summer of 2020, Manash was awarded the IU Summer Research Scholarship in order to develop an application to assist researchers in synchronizing multi-modal datasets. After this project, Manash assisted in a project using physiological sensors and intensive data analysis to gain a systems-level view of how infants coordinate their behavior. After graduation, he spent another semester as a research assistant in the same lab developing several machine-learning based models to classify various types of infant-directed speech. From these research experiences, Manash found significant interest in using computation and advanced technology to sample and analyze human behavior.

As a Simons fellow, Manash’s interests lie in using advanced technology such as eye-tracking, fMRI, and other physiological sensors to identify relationships between neurological activity and behavior in ASD. In his future endeavors, Manash plans to use his experiences at Marcus to pursue a career in data science.

Mackenzie Hines-Wilson is a joint Clinical Research Fellow and Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience. She graduated with college honors from Washington University in St. Louis in 2021 with a B.A. in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology with a concentration in Cognitive Neuroscience and a minor in Anthropology. At WashU, Mackenzie worked as a research assistant in the Cognition and Development Lab in the Psychological and Brain Sciences Department studying perceptions of cross-race vs same-race friendships and segregated vs integrated neighborhoods among children and undergraduate students of different racial demographics. Additionally, she worked as a research assistant in the WashU Department of Anthropology studying how socio-cultural factors impact the illness-experience of Black and non-Hispanic White amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients in St. Louis. She also pursued an independent research project through the WashU Public Health Institute analyzing differences in fear of falling (FOF) among older Black and older non-Hispanic White adults that are at high risk for falling and how that relates to signs of depression.

 As a Clinical Research Fellow and a Cohen Fellow, Mackenzie is interested in projects that are targeted at using eye-tracking measures of social visual engagement and clinical evaluations to increase early-detection of ASD in marginalized populations. She also hopes to investigate the relationship between co-occurring psychiatric disorders and ASD by using diagnostic tools and eye-tracking technology. In the future, Mackenzie plans to pursue an MD/MPH while also helping to mitigate the racial and socioeconomic inequities within our healthcare system.

Rola Adebogun graduated with high honors from Princeton University in May 2022 with an A.B. degree in Psychology and a minor in Neuroscience. While at Princeton, Rola worked under Dr. Nicole Shelton and Dr. Stacey Sinclair as a research assistant in the Stigma and Social Perception (SSP) Lab. In the SSP Lab, she supported the development and deployment of several studies, many of which investigated how interpersonal interactions translate culturally held biases into individual thoughts and actions. Under the guidance of Dr. Sinclair Rola completed her Junior Paper and Senior Thesis, both of which examined the mechanisms through which implicit racial bias distorts pain perception and leads to broader disparities in infant and maternal health treatment and outcomes. Driven by her passion for health equity, Rola also served as a research intern at the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, where she contributed to the creation of an actionable blueprint for the Nurture NJ Strategic Plan, a multi-pronged, multi-agency initiative targeted at achieving systematic and sustainable improvements to infant and maternal health in New Jersey.

As a joint Clinical Research and Cohen Fellow, Rola learns and administers various assessments used for clinical and diagnostic characterization of autism and uses eye-tracking technology to examine social visual engagement in typically developing children and those with autism. Currently, she is investigating whether characteristics of older siblings with autism are predictive of dimensional outcomes and the broader autism phenotype in younger siblings, while integrating eye-tracking data as an index for sensory sensitivity. Following her time at Marcus, Rola plans to pursue a doctoral degree in Neuropsychology.

Dori Balser graduated with high honors from Washington University in St. Louis in May 2022 with a B.A. in Psychological and Brain Sciences and a minor in Computer Science. At WashU, Dori was a research assistant in the Laboratory for Child Brain Development (LCBD) where she co-developed EmoCodes, a video coding system for characterizing complex movie stimuli in order to investigate socio-emotional processing in children. Dori continued this line of research in the Cognitive Control and Psychopathology Lab, where, with guidance from Dr. Deanna Barch, Dori conducted her honors thesis investigating neural correlates of emotion processing in pediatric anxiety, using fMRI to examine functional network activation to complex, negative stimuli coded with EmoCodes. This work, along with her summer experiences as a preschool camp counselor and NAMI HelpLine Specialist, shaped Dori’s interest in the intersection of research and clinical practice in child psychology.

As a joint Clinical Research Fellow and Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience, Dori administers diagnostic assessments, aids in clinical evaluation, and uses eye-tracking technology to examine social-visual engagement in typically developing children and children with autism. She is currently working on a project investigating associations in autism symptomatology among sibling pairs. After the fellowship, Dori plans to pursue a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology.

Cynthia Belfleur, a Miami, Florida native, graduated with high honors from Spelman College in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a mental health concentration. Her time at Spelman was spent heavily in the community as a Corella and Bertram Bonner Scholar and Ford First Gen Scholar, working in health and education systems and interning at the Georgia Center for Child Advocacy. She was a research assistant for various labs with varied interests, such as mindfulness and PTSD, and metacognition in flip chemistry classrooms. Cynthia also attended the Danish Institute for Study Abroad, located in Copenhagen, Denmark, to study positive psychology and mental health. After Spelman College, Cynthia worked as an inclusive ELA teacher at a Title I charter middle school in Memphis, TN, through Teach for America.

Cynthia’s current role at the Marcus Autism Center is as the inaugural David Satcher Community Engagement Fellow. Her research at Marcus explores retrospective caregiver experiences of caretakers whose infants have participated in the Autism Center of Excellence (ACE) studies. By interrogating caregiver experiences, she hopes to understand and improve the Center’s relationships with families as they continue to utilize the Center for care. Concurrently, Cynthia is a research fellow at Morehouse School of Medicine working on Project GRIT under the Grady Trauma Project. The project focuses on capacity building, emphasizing resilience in African American women experiencing PTSD. Cynthia is also participating in the Georgia Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (GaLEND) at the Georgia State Center for Leadership in Disability. This interdisciplinary training program emphasizes providing coordinated, culturally competent, and family-centered care to children and their families. After completing her time as the Community Engagement Fellow, Cynthia will pursue a Ph.D. in clinical-community psychology, building on her passion for community engagement, education, policy, and mental health outcomes of marginalized communities.

Millena Yohannes graduated from Cornell University in 2022 with a B.A. in Sociology and a minor in Health Inequity. During her undergraduate studies, she worked as a research assistant on various sociological and psychological projects, such as tracking commonalities across sexual harassment complaints reported to Title IX offices; child development through play; purpose and identity; and community development. She gained exposure to translational research through her work as an RA in the Purpose and Identity Processes lab, working under Drs. Kaylin Ratner and Anthony Burrow to explore the effect of self driven learning on the psychosocial resources of adolescents, as well as exploring how translational research and engaged scholarship can enrich research for participants. Just as foundational to her time at Cornell was Millena’s community engagement experiences. Across all four years and even after graduation, Millena worked closely as a mentor, teacher, board member, and director for youth dance education and literacy program Ballet & Books. She also served as an ambassador for the Einhorn Center of Community Engagement at Cornell, where she worked to communicate tenets of community-engaged learning, the importance of deliberative critical reflection, understanding place and privilege, and mutual learning to the student body.

Millena currently serves as the Roger Glass fellow in Implementation Sciences. Her research goals at Marcus focus on the sustainability and adaptation of early autism interventions and implementation into community systems, especially around adaptation regarding cultural differences. Her current research examines early intervention use within Babies Can’t Wait, Georgia’s birth-to-three program. She is investigating what factors may predict child skill gain after receiving intervention, such as provider fidelity, barriers to treatment participation, and therapeutic alliance. Upon completing the fellowship, Millena plans to pursue an MD/MPH, remaining committed to community engagement, working with and for marginalized youth, and improving public health from the community level.