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.

Elly Kushner graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2019 with a B.Phil (B.S with Honors) in Developmental Psychology with a focus in Education and a minor in Social Work. As an undergraduate, she worked in the Learning Imaging and Family Experience Laboratory which studied the impacts of early life stress on children’s cognitive and academic outcomes. She also pursued independent projects related to training and assessing the experiences of early child care providers working with children with ASD in the community. Additionally, she spent time as a research assistant in the Infant Communication Lab where she completed a thesis examining the relationship between infants’ early social attention and parent speech among children who are at high risk for ASD.

As an Education Sciences Research Fellow, Elly is pursuing projects that link measures of social visual engagement to children’s classroom behaviors and academic outcomes with the goal of creating and evaluating community viable educational interventions for students with ASD. In the future, Elly hopes to complete a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology.

Asha Rudrabhatla graduated from Colorado College in 2020 with a B.A. in Psychology and 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 as part of a team to assist with research on the emergence and development of stereotypes in children. 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. Currently, she is contributing to research projects on the adaptation of social emotional interventions for early childhood settings and active engagement in inclusive preschool classrooms. In the future, Asha hopes to pursue a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology.

Originally from Nepal, Sanju Koirala graduated from Hamilton College, NY in 2019 with a B.A. in Neuroscience. As a recipient of Emerson Research Grant at Hamilton, she investigated the availability and use of mental health resources after the earthquake in Nepal and conducted creative writing workshops as a psychological healing space for school-children. She also worked in the Hamilton Learning Lab where she researched the computational theories and neural basis of learning. Her undergraduate research culminated in a senior thesis examining multi-sensory integration in adults and 6-7-year-old children. 

As a Simons Fellow, Sanju s using eye-tracking and neuroimaging data to examine the brain mechanisms underlying subjectively-perceived visual engagement and how such mechanisms differ between typically developing and ASD children. Additionally, she is streamlining reflexive and social smile detection in infants by setting up an automated smile coding pipeline. After the fellowship, Sanju plans to pursue a doctoral degree in Computational Cognitive Neuroscience.

Deniz Parmaksiz graduated from Emory University in 2019 with a B.S. in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology and a minor in German Studies. Her involvement in undergraduate research began as a work-study assistant for a pediatric leukemia laboratory at Emory, but it wasn’t until her summer internship at NorthShore Hospital, where she investigated the interactions of the microbiome and neurodevelopment in mice models, that she started considering a career as a scientific investigator. Determined to pursue this line of research, Deniz joined and spent the latter half of her undergraduate career as a member of BUILD lab at Emory, where she was involved with the Baby Microbiome study, helping examine the impact of prenatal stress and environmental exposures on infant development across the first 18 months of life. Deniz had the opportunity to extend her experiences to a broader scope as part of a summer position at Center for Children’s Health, the Environment, the Microbiome, and Metabolomics (C-CHEM2), during which time she continued to work at BUILD lab while also rotating the other laboratories and research cores within the center to investigate the relationships between pre- and postnatal environment and the impacts thereof on brain development and microbiome.

As a Simons Fellow, Deniz is involved with research studying the developmental trajectories of social visual engagement in ASD and hopes to focus on machine learning and computational methods during her time at Marcus. Following the fellowship, Deniz plans on pursuing an MD/PhD degree and working as a physician scientist.

Yixin (Stella) Yuan graduated with honors from Carnegie Mellon University in 2019 with a B.S. in Neuroscience computational track and a minor in biological sciences. At CMU, she conducted research on epigenetic changes in the brain both during normal aging and in individuals with neurodegenerative disease. Her work was presented in an honors thesis on cell-type specific analysis of H3K27ac profile in aged individuals. Her interest in language acquisition also prompted her to conduct research on the neural correlates of speech segmentation at Tokyo Tech as her summer project. 

Her first-year project as a Simons fellow focuses on predicting functional communication outcomes in ASD versus typically developing children based on the trajectory of fixation patterns collected from longitudinal eye tracking sessions. Some of her other projects of interest are streamlining reflexive smile detection in infants by setting up an automated smile-coding pipeline, and performing a pilot study on to what extent peripheral blood-samples are predictive of neuronal gene expression profiles using mice RNA-seq data. 

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.

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.