Current Fellows

Hannah Tokish graduated with distinction from Cornell University in 2020 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Spanish. At Cornell, Hannah worked as a research assistant in the Eleanor J. Gibson Laboratory of Developmental Psychology, studying the development of language in a social context. She pursued an independent project on the reward value of unimodal versus multimodal social cues in typically developing infants. During a clinical research internship in the Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Cohen Children’s Medical Center, she was drawn to research on developmental disorders and decided to pursue further training at the intersection of developmental and clinical psychology. As a Cohen fellow, Hannah uses eye tracking to study the development of social visual engagement in typically developing children and children with autism. She is also interested in exploring the neural underpinnings of autism in order to help guide early detection and intervention. In the future, Hannah hopes to pursue a doctoral degree in clinical psychology.

Asha Rudrabhatla graduated with distinction from Colorado College in 2020 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Spanish. Through her work with various grassroots organizations, Asha has channeled her passion for social justice into immigrant rights advocacy and mental health advocacy efforts. As an undergraduate intern at the Global Mental Health Program at Columbia University, she helped advocate for accessibility to local and global mental health services through participation in collaborative research efforts. She has also interned at the Berkeley Early Learning Lab at UC Berkeley, where she worked on a study examining the emergence and development of stereotyping behavior. Interested in identifying areas of focus for socioculturally sensitive interventions, Asha has also examined possible mechanisms of depression and psychological distress in Asian Americans as part of her undergraduate thesis research. As an Education Sciences Research Fellow, Asha hopes to use research as a tool for positive social change through promoting access to inclusive and equitable interventions for individuals with ASD in educational settings, in particular for underserved communities. Currently, she is leading a research project investigating barriers to engagement and parent outcomes related to sociocultural adaptation of evidence-based parent-mediated interventions, and a state-wide survey-based study geared towards identifying factors optimizing buy-in for inclusive Pre-K programs. Her interests in clinical and implementation science have inspired her to continue addressing health disparities by pursuing a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology.

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.

Originally from St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, Shivaang “Shiv” Chawla graduated from Emory University in 2020 with a B.S. in Quantitative Sciences with a concentration in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. During his undergraduate years, Shiv conducted research on the role of norepinephrine in Alzheimer’s Disease. He specifically studied the effects of prolonged DREADD-induced activation of the Locus Coeruleus (the main noradrenergic nucleus of the brain) on AD pathology in the hippocampus of aged transgenic rats. Prior to his senior year, Shiv’s interest in healthcare led him to an internship with the US Department of State where he worked with the health unit staff at the US Embassy in Helsinki and observed the Nordic healthcare system.

As a Simon’s Fellow, Shiv’s interests lie in eye-tracking and neuroimaging. His first-year project looks at the effects of rhythm stemming from infant-directed singing on entrainment in typically developing and ASD infants. After the fellowship, Shiv plans on pursuing a MD with the hopes to practice neurosurgery while also creating new technologies that increase the accessibility, affordability, and accuracy of medicine.

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.

Emma McQueen graduated with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2020 with a B.S. in Psychology and minors in Chemistry and Neuroscience. As a recipient of the Autism Science Foundation Undergraduate Research Grant and David Bray Peele Award, she completed her senior thesis assessing executive functioning profiles in 7-12-year-old children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder using electroencephalography, the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery and parent report. She also worked as a research assistant in the Early Development in Neurodevelopmental Disorders Lab evaluating restricted and repetitive behaviors in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. As a volunteer at the UNC TEACCH for Toddlers Early Intervention Program, Emma worked to incorporate naturalistic, structured, and behavioral intervention strategies with parent coaching.

As a Clinical Research Fellow, Emma is pursuing projects that link social-visual engagement measures to interdisciplinary clinical assessment and evaluation. She hopes to focus on investigating the predictive power of eye-tracking data compared to diagnostic measures of ASD across vulnerable populations. After the fellowship, Emma plans to pursue an MD and specialize in Developmental Pediatrics.