People
Prof. Daphne Bavelier
(Head)
Daphne Bavelier is an expert on how humans learn. In particular, she studies how the brain adapts to changes in experience, either by nature - for example, deafness - or by training - for example, playing video games. Initially trained in Biology at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, she then received a PhD in Brain and Cognitive Science from MIT, Boston, MA and trained in human brain plasticity at the Salk Institute, San Diego, CA.
She has pioneered work on how digital technologies may be leveraged for brain plasticity and learning. Over the past 20 years, her lab has unraveled how playing fast-paced, action-packed entertainment video games, typically thought to be mind-numbing, actually benefits several aspects of behavior. Exploiting this counter-intuitive finding, her lab now investigates how new media, such as video games, can be leveraged to foster learning and brain plasticity.
Daphne Bavelier now directs the Brain and Learning Laboratory, a Cognitive Neuroscience research team at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Her expertise is also sought outside of academia. She is a co-founding scientific advisor of Akili Interactive, a company which develops clinically-validated cognitive therapeutics that exploit video games. She has been on steering committees of the World Economic Forum for projects such as the global agenda project on ‘New Vision for Education: Unlocking the potential of technology’, or the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Human Enhancement.
Her scientific contribution has been recognized by several prizes over the years, including the John Merck Scholar Award (2000-2004), a finalist selection for the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientist (2008), and more recently being the recipient of the 2019 Klaus J. Jacobs Awards, that honors outstanding research with social impact on children and youth with a one million Swiss Francs endowment.
Sarah Albert
(Administration)
Sylvie Denkinger
(PhD Candidate)
Naima Gradi
(PhD Candidate)
Freya Joëssel
(PhD Candidate)
Timothy Piton
(PhD Candidate)
Shadee Thiam
(Research assistant, ARE)
Marc Yanguez
(Postdoc)
Benoit Bediou
(Senior Research Associate)
Marjolaine Cohen
(PostDoc)
Cvetomir Dimov
(Ambizzione Fellow)
Fabrice Guibert
(PhD Candidate)
Arthur Nguyen
(PhD Candidate)
Koriana Rabemanantsoa
(Undergraduate Student Tech)
Sezen Cekic
(Senior Research and Teaching Associate)
Cyriaque De Renty
(Undergraduate Student Tech)
Marios Fanourakis
(Senior Research Associate)
Jessy Damas
(Lab Tech)
Angela Pasqualotto
(Postdoc)
Kenneth Rioja
(Teaching and research assistant, ARE)
Rebecca is now an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Nazareth College.
Irene Altarelli
Irene is now post-doc in the Cognitive Neuroimaging lab in Paris
Chiara is a PhD student at LaPsyDÉ laboratory in Paris.
Shannon Bailey
Shannon is a game programmer at Bethesda Softworks in Rockville, MD.
Simon Barthelmé
After a postdoc in Alex Pouget's lab, Simon is now Professor at Gipsa-Lab in Grenoble.
Mrim is a Learning Success Specialist at the U.S. Department of Defense Naval Community College and a Professional Track Faculty in Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland.
Craig is currently working toward a PhD in UCDavis’s Psychology Program, investigating human memory through brain imaging and patient work.
Albert Buchard
Albert is now working as a AI research scientist at Babylon Health in London
Pedro is currently ATTRACT fellow at the Luxembourg center for educational testing (LUCET)
Adrien is now a postdoc researcher at the Vision Institute in Paris (la Sorbonne). He works in the Aging and Vision in Action lab, who investigates the specific underlying factors altering perceptive and spatial cognitive aspects of visual aging.
Aaron is now a postdoc in the Laboratory for Cognitive and Perceptual Learning at Brown, studying the role of excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters in mediating the links between perceptual learning generalization, sleep, and feedback.
Julie is a postdoc research fellow at the Brain Imaging Center at McLean Hospital with a cross appointment in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Anna Flavia Di Natale
She is now collaborating with the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Milan in the Laboratory of Interactive Communication and New Technologies. She is currently working on the role of flow in positive technologies, avatar-mediated communication and she is investigating the factors influencing the acceptance of video games as learning tools at school
Matt is now a faculty member in Speech and Hearing Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is continuing his studies of cross-modal plasticity in deaf children and running the American Sign Language program.
Aleksandra Fazilpour
Aleksandra is currently a Baggett Fellow (Research Faculty) at the University of Maryland.
David Feder
Nina Fernandez
Nina is a speech-language pathologist who focuses on providing rehabilitation for adults with swallowing and neurogenic disorders in skilled nursing and long-term care facilities.
Julia Föcker
Julia is now assistant professor in clinical neuropsychology at the faculty of psychology and pedagogy at Ludvig-Maximilians University in Munich.
France Ginchereau
Working at the Episcopal Center for Children in Washington, DC.
Shawn is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Arnaud Guidon
Arnaud is a Ph.D. student in the Biomedical Engineering program at Duke University. He is working in Allen Song’s laboratory at the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center on developing acquisition methods for enhancing spatial and temporal resolution of functional MRI.
Matt Hall
Matt is currently a Ph.D candidate at the University of California at San Diego.
Raylene Harris
Raylene is an associate professor in the department of psychology at Gallaudet University.
Angela Hauser
Angela is now working at RIT as a full-time sign language interpreter for the deaf.
Santiago Herce-Castañon
Elisabeth Hirshorn
Elisabeth is now postdoc at Pitts.
Samuel Huang
Sam is a former undergrad & lab tech.
Bjorn Hubert-Wallander
Bjorn is now a graduate student at the University of Washington.
Theodore Jacques
Ted is now a graduate student at UC Riverside.
Adam Katz
Adam is now a graduate student in science policy at Georgetown University.
Elisabeth Klobusicky
Elisabeth is a former research assistant in Rochester’s lab.
Rachel Kludt
Rachel is working as a Teaching Assistant at the Norman Howard School and enrolled in a Special Education Masters program at Nazareth College.
Sharath Koorathota
Sharath is a former lab tech.
Renjie Li
Renjie is currently working at Blizzard Entertainment.
Dave earned his B.A. in BCS in 2003. He went on to study Human-Computer Interaction at Georgia Tech and now researches and designs tools for information visualization at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He went from 96 days of sunshine to 300 and still gets better skiing.
Ash is now now the Senior Manager of Evidence Development and Cognitive Science with Atentiv, Inc. in Waltham, MA.
MaryJo Maciejewski
Katherine Medford
Katherine is a former research assistant in Rochester’s lab.
Teresa is now a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Shriver Center in Waltham, Massachusetts where she is studying the development of visual perception in deaf infants, children, and adults. More info…
Tony Monacelli
Tony is a licensed clinical psychologist, currently practicing in Rochester, NY.
Mithun Mukherjee
Mithun is working as a technology licensing associate at the Office of Technology Transfer at the University of Rochester Medical Center. He is also a part-time student at the Simon School of Business.
Aaron is now an associate professor of cognitive neuroscience and the director of the Neurocognitive Imaging Laboratory at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Riccardo is currently post doc with Larry Maloney
Swann is now an associate professor at the Geneva school for health science. He is interested in the potential of training attentional control to strengthen emotion regulation capacities. He is also interested in the application of theories and methodologies from behavioral science, game design and psychology to develop and evaluate interventions in the field of healthcare and mental healthcare
Jason Proksch
Aparna Sapre
Aparna now works as a Technical Manager at Optra systems, located in Pune, India. She manages the development of medical imaging applications.
Brooke is now a grad student in the Clinical and Social Psych dept at Rochester.
Keith Schneider
Keith works at the Rochester Center for Brain Imaging in Rochester, NY.
Kengo is now a PhD student at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. He investigates working memory in various neurodegenerative disorders.
Mike Sugarman
Mike is a Ph.D. student in the Clinical Psychology program at Wayne State University. He works with John Woodard investigating strategies for pre-clinical detection of Alzheimer's disease, including fMRI.
Jennifer is now a research assistant professor in the Division of Neurology and Pediatric Brain Imaging Research Program at Cincinatti Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
Jutta VanStean
Indu is a former post doc from the lab.
Gary is studying medicine at the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYCOM)
Ruyuan is now post doc in Kendrick N Kay's Computational Visual Neuroscience lab at university of Minnesota