Barry Giesbrecht
Principal Investigator
Professor, Psychological & Brain Sciences
Co-Director, Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies
Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Dynamical Neuroscience
Co-Director, Kavli Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience
Tom Bullock
Project Scientist
Tom studies the neural mechanisms of attentional control and how these are impacted by different global states, such as bouts of acute physical exercise and acute stress. He combines behavioral, neuroimaging and physiological measures to better understand how the brain supports cognitive function in response to physical and cognitive challenges.
Carly Chak
Graduate Student
Carly’s research focuses on the influence of value-driven attentional capture on working memory. Her current research project examines how interrupting value-associated stimuli impact the contents of working memory. She is also interested in further understanding the competition between different types of attentional priority (i.e., cued vs. value-driven) and how this might modulate the contents within working memory over time.
Shivang Shelat
Graduate Student
Shivang's research centers on spontaneous cognition (i.e., mind-wandering) and how it affects memory, perception, and attention. He also applies principles in attention neuroscience to optimize human-computer interactions. Shivang is co-supervised by Barry and Jonathan Schooler.
Henri Etel Skinner
Graduate Student
Henri's primary research interests are investigating the relative contributions of the different cognitive mechanisms involved in sustaining attention. She aims to use behavioral data and neural activity from EEG recordings to investigate the relationship between attention-related oscillatory activity to failures of sustained attention.
Leah Gano
Graduate Student
Leah is primarily interested in understanding cognition during real-world activity. She aims to use augmented reality to investigate how cognition is influenced by different environments and physically active tasks.
gano@ucsb.edu
Emily Machniak
Junior Specialist
Emily’s research projects are focused on how physical states and virtual interfaces affect cognitive performance and attention. Her current research projects use EEG to investigate how physical exercise impacts sustained attention, and how dynamic locomotive behaviors impact information processing in augmented reality. Emily works both in the Attention Lab and Dr. Sprague's Lab.
Caitlin Gregory
Ex officio Junior Specialist
Caitlin's research projects are focused on how changes in physiological state affect information processing and attentional control. Her current project is using fMRI to investigate if physical fatigue modulates the persistent effects of reward learning on behavior. Caitlin currently is an EMT, but continues to advise the lab on projects and administration in her free time.
Undergraduate Research Assistants
Alexis Clubb, Abigail Jacobs, Aiden Kato, Brandon Tran, Catherine Wen, Chris Boling, Dana Cruz, Elise Kormos, Isa Ruacho, Janani Aiyer, Karina Mijangos, Kaylene Truong, Karina Guzman, Leah Jackson, Luke Trigler, Madhav Viswesvaran, Melissa Hernandez, Mia Yang, Olivia Gettner.
Lab Alumni
Postdocs
- Mary MacLean, PhD (2020) - Defence Scientist, Defence Research and Development Canada
- Matt Gobel, PhD (2018), Lecturer, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
- Jelena Ristic, PhD (2009), Professor, Psychology, McGill University
- Hubert Cecotti, PhD (2013), Associate Professor, Computer Science, Cal State Fresno
Graduate Students
- Jordan Garrett, PhD (2024), Applied Cognitive Scientist, Pacific Science & Engineering, San Diego
- Anne Milner, PhD (2023), Postdoctorate at UC Berkeley Sleep Team
- Diya Das, PhD (2021), UX Researcher at UpWork.com
- Cris Garduno, MA (2020), Product Researcher at Brooks Running
- Lindsey Purpura, MA (2017), Project Manager at Amazon
- James Elliott, PhD (2013), Adjunct Professor, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo / Project Scientist, UCSB
- Ryan Kasper, PhD (2013), UX Researcher, Meta Reality Labs, Palo Alto, CA
- Jocelyn L. Sy, PhD (2011), Quantitative UX Researcher, Google
- Krista DeLeeuw, PhD (2009, co-advised by Rich Mayer) University of Illinois, Gies College of Business, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
Visiting Graduate Students
- Dawa Dupont, PhD Candidate, University of Copenhagen
Honors Thesis Students
- Chloe Swoiskin (2024)
- Lauren Lee (2024)
- Anh-Thu Van (2024)
- Riddhima Chandra (2023)
- Emily Machniak (2023)
- Anabel Salimian (2022)
- Tommy Kan (2020)
- Kamryn Pickett (2020)
- Danny Toomey (2019)
- Lena Nalbandian (2017)
- Gisella Diaz (2016)
