Donald J Cohen Fellows in Developmental Neuroscience
Tristan Ponzo graduated with distinction in 2018 from Cornell University with a B.S. in Human Development, concentrating in Human Behavioral Neuroscience and minoring in Biological Sciences. During his time there, Tristan participated in research examining the hot and cold cognitive factors of risky decision making in adolescents and adults at both the behavioral and neural levels. He used the imaging skills he accumulated in this role to complete a research fellowship at the Mayo Clinic, where he applied various imaging techniques to examine the myocardial mechanics of early-stage metabolic syndrome as well as folic acid-induced acute kidney damage in porcine and rodent models.
As a Cohen fellow, Tristan investigated the predictive power of eye-tracking data compared to gold standard diagnostic measures of ASD. Tristan also worked on the neuroimaging team, where he sought to relate features of infant brain networks to measures of variance in social visual engagement. Tristan is currently a medical student at Vanderbilt University.
Originally from Panama City, Panama, Adriana Mendez graduated from Emory University in 2018 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Economics. While at Emory, she completed a senior thesis assessing the implications of bilingualism on learning in adults. She also worked as a research assistant at the Bauer Memory Lab where she studied memory development in school-aged children. Additionally, as a research assistant at the Atlanta VA Medical Center she worked with adults with chronic pain who had served in the United States armed forces. Finally, she was a Practicum Student at the Marcus Autism Center Severe Behavior Unit, where she worked to mitigate severe behaviors in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
As a fellow, she studied the impacts of bilingual early-life language exposure on measures of sociovisual engagement through eye-tracking. Adriana continues this and other lines of research focused on ameliorating health disparities in the diagnosis and treatment of ASD now as a graduate student in Clinical Psychology at Emory under the mentorship of Dr. Ami Klin.
Originally from Philadelphia, PA, Sarah Markert graduated with honors from University of Pittsburgh in 2017 with a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Children’s Literature. She worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the Infant Communication Lab, part of Pitt’s Early Autism Study, researching infant language, gesture, and motor development. Her undergraduate research culminated in a senior honors thesis that examined maternal responses to infant pre-speech vocalization types and subsequent language development in children at high and low risk for ASD.
As a Cohen fellow, Sarah conducted eye-tracking research with infants and toddlers with and without ASD. At Marcus, she pursued a project investigating the adaptive value of attending to social stimuli in children with ASD and William’s Syndrome, specifically interested in identifying disorder-specific visual attention patterns, and how moment-to-moment attention to different features of the face impacts language development. Sarah is currently a graduate student in Clinical Psychology at Duke University.
Aiden Ford graduated from the University of Connecticut in 2017 with a B.S. in Physiology & Neurobiology and Neurodevelopment & Health, and minors in Anthropology and Neuroscience. At UConn, she conducted undergraduate research assessing the behavioral and neurostructural phenotypes of animal models of neurodevelopmental pathology with specific focus for her honors thesis on the TS2-neo mouse model of Timothy Syndrome mediated-ASD.
As a Cohen fellow, Aiden collected eye-tracking data from infants and toddlers across the developmental spectrum. Her first year project focused on mapping the patterns of time-dependent visual scanning in cohorts of children with ASD and Williams Syndrome during moments of gaze-cued joint attention with the aim of investigating the pathways by which children orient to intentional object use. Aiden is currently a graduate student in Neuroscience at Emory University and continues to work with Dr. Sarah Shultz to investigate the mechanisms by which dyadic social experience contributes to infant neurobehavioral development.
Originally from San Diego, CA, Megan Micheletti graduated with honors from UCLA with a B.S. in Psychobiology and a minor in Applied Developmental Psychology. Her undergraduate honors research at UCLA’s Semel Institute focused on the parent and child factors associated with ASD service receipt. She also worked as a research assistant in UCLA’s ADHD and Development Lab and the Fernald Child Study Center. As a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience, Meg worked on projects quantifying the moment-by-moment changes in infants’ visual attention over the first two years of life and investigating the effects of early developmental surveillance on ASD children’s clinical outcomes. Meg is currently a clinical psychology Ph.D. student at The University of Texas at Austin.
Originally from Bainbridge Island, WA, Isabella (Isa) Stallworthy graduated with honors from Middlebury College in 2015 with a B.A. in Neuroscience. She grew up overseas, spending time in Bolivia, England, and Myanmar. At Middlebury, she led research exploring the physiological and cognitive effects of long-term meditation practice and its link to prosocial behavior, and how the testing effect modulates associative memory. Her senior honors project investigated how top-down attentional control and emotion influence episodic memory. As a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience, Isa examined how social smiling and visual engagement influence infant-caregiver dyadic interactions in typically developing infants and those who develop autism. Isa is a graduate student in the Ph.D. in Child Psychology program at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota.
Originally from Erie, PA, Julia Yurkovic graduated from the University of Rochester in 2015. She graduated with a B.S. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, a B.A. in Psychology, and a minor in American Sign Language. Her senior thesis used fMRI and behavioral measures to test how visuospatial working memory and numerical processing contributed to mathematical achievement and the fronto-parietal math network in 3- to 5-year-old children. As a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience, her projects include examining visual social engagement patterns in a large sample of school-aged children to provide a framework for parsing heterogeneity in autism. Julia is now a graduate student in Developmental Psychology and Cognitive Science at Indiana University.
Originally from Portland, OR, Lindsay Olson graduated from Whitman College in 2012 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Spanish. Her senior honors thesis examined the effects of socioeconomic status on identity development in adolescents. After Whitman, Lindsay worked as a behavior interventionist with young children who have autism and related disorders. She was also a research assistant at Oregon Health and Science University where she investigated differences in pragmatic language use between children with ASD and those who are typically developing. As a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2014-2016, she participated in eye-tracking research with infants, toddlers, and adolescents with and without autism. She investigated the extent to which longitudinal patterns of social engagement differentiate typically developing infants from those diagnosed with ASD. She is now completing a PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of California San Diego.
Originally from New Jersey,Robin Sifre graduated from Brown University with a B.S. in Cognitive Neuroscience. Her senior honors thesis explored the cognitive mechanisms underlying punishment judgments, and why we punish accidental agents. In addition, she also investigated how the development of controlled visual attention in infants interacts with learning and memory. As a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2014-2016, her research examined how visual attention to social stimuli during infancy influences later cognitive and social outcomes. Robin is now a PhD student in Child Psychology at the University of Minnesota.
Rachel Sandercock, a Philadelphia native, graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2013 with a B.Phil. (B.S. with honors) in Psychology and a B.A. in English literature with a certificate in children’s literature. Rachel’s undergraduate research focused on the role of gesture use as a predictor of language development in infants at high genetic risk for autism spectrum disorder. As a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2013-2015, Rachel examined how smiling behavior in infants with ASD may be indicative of very early deviations from the normative course of social development. She is currently completing a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
A military kid, Alaina Wrencher was born in the Netherlands. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2013 with a B.Phil. (B.S. with honors) in Psychology, a minor in Administration of Justice, and a certificate in American Sign Language. Her senior honors thesis explored whether a novel, syllable-based orthography of English that utilizes face images (as opposed to letters) might improve reading skills for individuals with reading disorders, such as dyslexia. As a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience, her research assessed the extent to which eye-tracking measures of social disability can serve as successful endpoints for the assessment of new treatments. Alaina is now a PhD student in Public Policy at Georgia State University and works as a graduate research assistant at the Georgia Health Policy Center’s Center of Excellence for Children’s Behavioral Health.
Originally from Diamond Bar, CA, Eugene Kim graduated from the University of California, Irvine in 2012 with a B.A. in Cognitive Psychology and a minor in Linguistics. As an undergraduate, Eugene was involved in a visual perception and neuroimaging laboratory where he investigated the effects of biological motion cues on visual-spatial attention. As a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience, he participated in eye-tracking research with infants, toddlers and adolescents with autism. Eugene is interested in the early learning mechanisms implicated in the ontogeny of adaptive social functioning and their underlying neural substrate. He is currently completing a PhD program in Developmental Psychology at Indiana University at Bloomington.
Grace Ann Marrinan graduated from Princeton University in 2012 with an A.B. in Psychology and a Certificate in Neuroscience. Her undergraduate thesis investigated the relationship between verbatim memory for language and a local bias of attention within other perceptual domains among typical individuals. As a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience she assisted with eye-tracking studies of infants, toddlers, and adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Grace Ann is interested in exploring intrinsic motivations and characteristics of the visual scene that contribute to patterns of dynamic visual scanning of individuals with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder. She plans to complete a post-baccalaureate, pre-medical training program.
Serene Habayeb, who grew up in Dubai, UAE, graduated from the University of Rochester in 2011 with a B.S. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a minor in Psychology. As an undergraduate, she conducted research in a developmental neuropsychology lab working on an fMRI study investigating the neural basis of audiovisual integration and language comprehension in autism. Serene was a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2011-2013. She is currently at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC completing a PhD in Clinical Psychology with a concentration in children, families and culture.
Tawny Tsang graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in music. She was involved in a cognition and action laboratory as an undergraduate where she explored a variety of topics including cerebellar ataxia, reaching in virtual environments, and the role of dopamine in reward and movement. As a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2011-2013, Tawny explored the development of oculomotor functions in infants at high- and low-risk for developing ASD and their relation to visual social scanning. She is currently completing a PhD program in Developmental Psychology at UCLA and plans to continue researching the relationship between visual behaviors and social cognitive development.
Originally from Atlanta, GA, Jessica Jones graduated from Stanford University in 2010 with a B.A. in Human Biology. As an undergraduate, she conducted independent research designed to investigate the relationship between social support provided to parents after a child’s traumatic brain injury and subsequent child and family outcomes. She was a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2010-2012. Jessica is interested in the relationship between early neuro-plasticity in children and the effectiveness of early intervention for children with ASD. Jessica now attends medical school at Case Western Reserve University.
Andrea Trubanova graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in Psychology and a Certificate in Neuroscience in 2010. As an undergraduate, Andrea was involved in research exploring the perception of audiovisual speech. As a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2010-2012, Andrea was interested in extending her undergraduate research to investigate how toddlers with autism perceive audiovisual synchrony under varying degrees of social context. In addition, she worked as a research coordinator and volunteer in an early intervention program at the Marcus Autism Center. Currently, Andrea is a clinical graduate student at Virginia Tech exploring co-occurring symptoms, such as anxiety, in adolescents with autism.
A native of Oakland, CA, Jenn Moriuchi is a graduate student in Clinical Psychology at Emory University. She received her B.A. in Neuroscience from Wellesley College, where she conducted research in a behavioral neuroscience laboratory using a mouse model of Rett Syndrome. As a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2009-2011, Jenn studied gaze aversion in toddlers with autism as well as phenotypic heterogeneity in school-age children with autism. She continues to work with Ami Klin and Warren Jones at the Marcus Autism Center on studies of developmental processes impacting outcome in autism.
Originally from Iowa City, Iowa, Katherine Rice received her B.A. in Psychology and Linguistics from the University of Michigan in 2009. A Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2009-2011, Katherine is interested in the early detection of autism spectrum disorders and in the relationship between social cognition and language development in both typically developing infants and in infants at risk for autism. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in developmental psychology at the University of Maryland.
Laura Edwards, originally from Kingston, Jamaica, graduated from Yale University with a B.S. in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology in 2008. She was a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2008-2010. Laura conducts research on the neurological underpinnings of social cognition, in order to inform the design of developmentally appropriate educational curricula and interventions for children with ASD. She received her doctorate in education from Harvard University in 2015 and is currently working as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children’s Hospital
Jessie Northrup 2008-2010 graduated from the Cornell University in 2008, with her B.A. in Psychology and Anthropology. As an undergraduate, Jessie was involved in research exploring the social mechanisms that help infants and toddlers develop language. As a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2008-2010, Jessie was interested in applying her undergraduate research to investigate language development in infants with autism and how deficits in social interaction could affect language learning. Her research in the Social Neuroscience Lab investigated perception of audiovisual synchrony under varying degrees of social context in toddlers with autism. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Pittsburgh.
Originally from San Francisco, CA, Anna Krasno received her BA in Cognitive Science with a minor in Environmental Studies from UC San Diego in 2006. During her time as a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2007-2009, Anna investigated implicit measures of social attribution by visual scanning in children with autism. Anna is interested in joint attention, speech development, and finding early diagnostic markers of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Anna completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of California in Santa Barbara. She is a Registered Psychologist and is completing her postdoctoral training hours at the Child Abuse Listening & Mediation Center in Santa Barbara, CA.
Casey Zampella graduated from the University of Rochester in 2007 with her B.S. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a minor in Clinical Psychology. Casey is interested in brain-behavior relationships in clinical populations, particularly in young children with autism spectrum disorders. Her research as a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2007-2009 investigated oculomotor function in school-aged children with ASD during a natural viewing task. Casey is currently studying clinical psychology at the University of Rochester.
Sarah Shultz, Ph.D., was a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2006-2008. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Emory University School of Medicine.
Kelley Knoch graduated from the University of Rochester in 2006, with her B.A. in Brain and Cognitive Science. As a Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2006-2008, Kelley investigated the temporal dynamics of visual fixation patterns in high functioning adolescents with autism while viewing naturalistic social situations. She is currently a Neuropsychology Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Connecticut.
Katelin Carr was the Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2005-2006. Katelin did research as an undergraduate on social skills training for children with autism and completed her degree in History at Yale University. While a Fellow, Katelin studied visual salience in 2 year-old children with autism. She completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with Dr. Deborah Fein in the Early Detection Study of Autism Spectrum Disorders at the University of Connecticut. Currently she is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Pediatric Neuropsychology at Connecticut Pediatric Neuropsychology Associates.
Phillip Gorrindo was the Donald J. Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2005-2006. As an undergraduate, Phil studied Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University, and worked on electrophysiology research in the lab of Dr. Patricia Goldman-Rakic. While a Fellow, Phil worked on computational strategies for analyzing visual scanning as a function of physical image properties. Phil is currently a resident at Northwestern University.
Simons Fellows in Computational Neuroscience
Originally from Nepal, Sanju Koirala graduated from Hamilton College, NY in 2019 with a B.A. in Neuroscience. As a recipient of the 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 used 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 worked to streamline reflexive and social smile detection in infants by setting up an automated smile coding pipeline. Sanju is currently a graduate student in Developmental Psychology at the University of Minnesota.
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 was involved with research studying the developmental trajectories of social visual engagement in ASD with a focus on machine learning and computational methods. Deniz is currently a student in the MD/PhD program at Pennsylvania State University.
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.
Stella’s first-year project as a Simons fellow focused 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 included streamlining reflexive smile detection in infants by setting up an automated smile-coding pipeline, and performing a pilot study on the extent to which peripheral blood-samples are predictive of neuronal gene expression profiles using mice RNA-seq data. Stella is currently a graduate student in Neuroscience at the University of California San Diego.
Jack Olmstead graduated from Baylor University in 2017 with a B.S. in Neuroscience. His primary undergraduate research investigated the effects of early-life stress on cortico-amygdaloid circuitry and fear extinction in rats. He also did research at Yale School of Medicine performing neuroanatomical tracing techniques, and at Mount Sinai School of Medicine examining the morphological changes in rhesus monkey cortex as a result of learning.
Jack has worked on projects examining differences in patterns of social visual engagement in toddlers with Williams syndrome compared to those with ASD. His second-year project used machine learning to improve eye-tracking data collection from neonates in order to extend the lab’s research into the first weeks of life. Jack is currently a student in the MD/PhD program at the University of California San Diego.
Andrew Kreuzman graduated with honors from Middlebury College in 2016 with a B.A. in Neuroscience and Spanish. His senior honors thesis investigated the genetic basis of conditioned fear in outbred mice as an endophenotype of human PTSD. He has also worked as a research assistant in the Society, Psychology, and Health Research Lab at Columbia University, and the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. As a Simons Fellow in Computational Neuroscience, Andrew conducts eye-tracking research with infants, toddlers, and adolescents, merging his interest in computer science with his experience in neuroscience and research. His previous project focused on the development of the dynamic allocation of visual resources and the differences between children with varying levels of affectedness on the diagnostic spectrum. His current projects include investigating the visual scanning patterns of caregivers during live caregiver-infant interactions and creating stream-lined, user friendly pipelines for data management. After the fellowship, he will be pursuing a career in computer programming and has accepted an iOS development position in Atlanta.
Ella Coben graduated from Lewis & Clark College in 2015 with a B.A. in Computer Science/Mathematics and Psychology, and a minor in Mandarin Chinese. Her senior honors thesis examined the logarithmic-to-linear shift hypothesis in the numerical estimation skills of preschoolers. She has also worked as a research assistant at the University of Minnesota, in both a virtual reality research lab and the Math and Numeracy Lab at the Institute of Child Development. As a Simons Fellow in Computational Neuroscience at the Marcus Autism Center, her projects included analyzing visual engagement with physical properties of social stimuli, calculating the conditional probabilities of fixation during dynamic visual scanning, and tracking the concordance of eye-tracking measures in twin pairs over time. Ella is a research scientist at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development.
Abin Abraham graduated from the University of Michigan in 2013 with a B.S.E in Biomedical Engineering with a concentration in Biochemistry. During his undergrad, he investigated potential biomarkers for Acute Kidney Injury in pediatric populations and explored inhibitors of T-cell activation. In addition, he also helped develop a novel high throughput and low crosstalk immunohistochemistry assay. For his senior capstone project, he designed a device for quantitative assessment of upper limb therapy. As a Simons Fellow in Computational Neuroscience, he worked on early detection for ASD and the role of audiovisual synchrony in guiding attention of toddlers with ASD. He is currently an MD/PhD candidate at Vanderbilt University.
Originally from Newton, MA, Carolyn Ranti graduated from Brown University in 2013 with a B.S. in Neuroscience. Her undergraduate thesis explored the timing of hierarchical decision-making using behavioral measures and a biologically plausible neural network model, and the research was recently published in Cognition (Ranti, Chatham, & Badre, 2015). As a Simons Fellow in Computational Neuroscience, Carolyn's research assessed the use of eye-blinking as a measure of an individual's engagement with a visual stimulus. She also worked on software development for the lab and for various projects around the center. She is currently working as a software engineer at a startup in Cambridge.
Alyna Khan is originally from Philadelphia, PA and graduated from Brown University with an A.B in Classics and Biology with a focus on evolutionary biology. As an undergraduate, Alyna modeled linguistic patterns of phonemes and word order as a means to determine whether linguistic variation mirrors the genetic variation of that speaking population. As a Simons Fellow, she was involved in eye-tracking studies of infants, toddlers and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders, and explored predictive measures of gaze behavior. Currently she is living in Boston, MA and working as an Informatics Analyst at Foundation Medicine, Inc. She is working on classifying subtypes in different cancers based on genomic profiles of solid tumor DNA from patients with metastatic cancer.
Sarah Glazer, originally from Dallas, TX, graduated from Columbia University with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering with a specialty in imaging. As an undergraduate, Sarah designed iPhone and iPad apps to be used to augment therapy aimed to teach emotion recognition to children with ASD. As a Simons Fellow in Computational Neuroscience, she examined gaze behavior to understand the development of interactional synchrony between mothers and infants and its underlying neural mechanisms. Sarah is currently completing the MD/PhD program at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, Jeremy Borjon graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in Psychology and a certificate in Neuroscience in 2010. His senior thesis explored the extent to which the brain has evolved for social interaction and has demonstrated that perceived social cues, such as eye gaze, can influence basic sound perception. As a Simons Fellow in Computational Neuroscience from 2010-2012, he investigated the development of gaze behavior in humans and nonhuman primates and its implications for the perception of social scenes. He is now pursuing his Ph.D. in Psychology at Princeton University.
Jennings Xu graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Biological Sciences in 2008 and was the Simons Fellow in Computational Neuroscience from 2008-2010. He has worked in various research fields, including molecular biology, genetics, physiology, and behavioral science. As an undergraduate, Jennings was published studying the sexual and group behaviors of mice ultrasound vocalizations in social interactions for his senior thesis. He is interested in identifying audiovisual signals that attract the attention of children with autism, as well as mapping early development characteristics that may help serve as clinically-relevant diagnostic indicators. Jennings is currently enrolled in the MD/PhD program at Case Western Reserve University.
David Lin was the Simons Fellow in Computational Neuroscience from 2006-2008. He graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. in Mathematics and Computational Sciences. As an undergraduate, he did research in a stem cell laboratory, investigating the distribution of stem cells within brain tumors. David is interested in applying various computational tools and methods to medicine. In his free time, David enjoys playing soccer and being outdoors. David is currently a Resident in Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Jack Olmsteadgraduated from Baylor University in 2017 with a B.S. in Neuroscience. His primary undergraduate research investigated the effects of early-life stress on cortico-amygdaloid circuitry and fear extinction in rats. He also did research at Yale School of Medicine performing neuroanatomical tracing techniques, and at Mount Sinai School of Medicine examining the morphological changes in rhesus monkey cortex as a result of learning.
Jack has worked on projects examining differences in patterns of social visual engagement in toddlers with Williams syndrome compared to those with ASD. His current project uses machine learning to improve eye-tracking data collection from neonates in order to extend the lab’s research into the first weeks of life. Jack plans on pursuing a career as a physician scientist after the fellowship.
Simons Fellows in Design Engineering
Michael Valente graduated from Georgia Tech with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. While at GT he spent his time between classes in the machine shop and student hackerspace making and breaking anything he could get his hands on. His undergraduate research included projects ranging from fluid powered walking robots and harvesting tools for indoor hydroponic farms to building new, more intuitive, backhoe controllers. As a Simon's Fellow in Design Engineering from 2012-2014, he used his background in design to work on a screening device for ASD. After the fellowship, Michael worked as an Electromechanical Engineer at Marcus, where he focused on creating assistive technologies for populations both with and without ASD. Currently, Michael is working in the Hardware Systems Laboratory at Xerox PARC.
Maria Ly graduated from the University of California, Davis with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering along with a minor in Fiber & Polymer Science and Technology Management. Her research experiences highlight the interdisciplinary work of Biomedical Engineering in both academia and industry. Her work at UC Davis includes: breast cancer metastasis suppression, electrospinning ly non-toxic gelatin nanofibers, and designing and building stair attachments with audio and visual feedback for physical therapy for individuals with cognitive and physical deficits. As a Simons Fellow in Design Engineering from 2011-2013, her research included the use of eye tracking as a diagnostic screener and characterizing the motor behavior of children with autism spectrum disorders. Maria is currently completing a Masters of Systems Engineering at the University of Houston.
Marilyn Ackerman, M.Arch., was the Simons Design Engineering Fellow at the Yale Child Study Center from 2008-2011 and worked on haptic research for infants and toddlers. Marilyn received her Bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University in 1981 with departmental honors in studio art. She was a scientific illustrator at Wesleyan until 1985. She received her Master of Architecture degree from the Yale School of Architecture in 1988 and for the past twenty years has been president of a regional preservation firm marily working on private residential structures, National Register Houses, National Landmarks and museum projects open to the public. Her work has been featured on Restore America and The History Channel She has received grants and research funding from the National Park Service, The National Trust for Historic Preservation and the State of Connecticut. She has served as faculty at the School of Engineering at the University of Hartford, Wesleyan University Graduate Liberal studies program and the Middlesex Transition academy at Wesleyan. She lives on a small farm in Durham, CT with her husband, four donkeys, four dogs and five grandchildren. In her spare time Marilyn enjoys rowing, tree house building and Taiko drumming.
Research Assistants
Jennifer Gutierrez graduated from Emory University in 2019 with a B.A. in Chemistry and a minor in Anthropology. During her time at Emory, Jennifer worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the Ortlund Lab investigating the glucocorticoid receptor, a transcriptional factor critical to development, metabolism, and stress. Jennifer combined structural biology and biochemical techniques to study the cortisol-mediated NF-kb inflammatory pathway that advances muscle degeneration of patients with Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy. During her breaks away from school, Jennifer traveled home to Nebraska to serve her community as a nurse aide at the local extended care facility and as an interpreter for Spanish-speaking residents. Upon graduating from Emory, Jennifer joined the U.S. Army Reserves and completed her training as a surgical specialist in Summer 2020.
As a research assistant at Marcus, Jennifer was part of the neuroimaging team and assisted in eye-tracking data collection for infants at high risk and low risk for ASD. Her work focused on studying transitions in cortical and subcortical visual pathways in early development. Jennifer is now a medical student at the University of California Los Angeles.
Jordan Pincus graduated from Emory University in 2019 with a B.S. in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. Her primary undergraduate research investigated the organization and development of systems involved in the visual perception of faces, scenes, and objects using both behavioral and neuroimaging methods. Particularly, her honors thesis work explored the development of scene perception abilities and scene-selective regions in the brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 5 and 8-year-old children. For some time, she also volunteered as a research assistant in the Severe Behavior Unit at the Marcus Autism Center. There, she helped create a database to explore the effects of behavioral intervention techniques on the severe behaviors of children with developmental disabilities, and their generalization across various environments.
As a research assistant, Jordan conducted neuroimaging and eye-tracking research on infants and toddlers at high and low risk for ASD. She also helped collect neuroimaging data on people with 3q29 microdeletion syndrome. Her later work included a project investigating the neural correlates of perceived stimulus salience in school-aged children with and without ASD. Jordan is currently a graduate student in Clinical Psychology at Georgia State University where she plans to specialize in Neuropsychology.
