Joy got started in the business with Michael Spivey at Cornell University. She then moved to Carnegie Mellon for grad school with Marlene Behrmann. After that, she went to UCL for a postdoc with Jon Driver and then to UCD with Ron Mangun. She was lucky to have been in the lab of caring mentors and brilliant scientists.
Postdoctoral Researchers
qawan@ucdavis.edu
Qianqian is fascinated by the cognitive processes underlying human learning. After conducting research on abstract category learning in children at The Ohio State University, her work has evolved to investigate more complex and ecologically valid stimuli. Her current research embraces the intricate nature of how humans perceive, learn, and remember information from the world around us.
Graduate Students
Cat is interested in how the neurocognitive systems underlying perception, which mediate how we interact with our environment, drive plasticity throughout development. In applying this broader question to the visual domain, she hopes to better understand the mechanisms at play, and clarify how these mechanisms might contribute to the etiology of neurodevelopmental disorders, like ASD, Schizophrenia, and ADHD.
Harry graduated from UC Davis in 2022 with degrees in Psychology and Cognitive Science, went to NYU for a MA in psychology before coming back as a PhD student! He's interested in VR and attention during naturalistic behaviors.
Makayla studies how we use context-based predictions to help guide visual attention. She primarily utilizes VR and EEGs/ERPs to better understand these processes. She developed these interests while completing her undergrad at UC Merced studying the neural underpinnings of cognitive control.
Andrea is a visiting graduate student from Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca. He's interested in real-world behaviors like driving, distraction, and the cognitive neuroscience of attentional control. He's also an avid photographer and mountaineer!
Jin majored in Psychology at Université Paris Cité and obtained a Master’s degree in Cognitive Science at Aix-Marseille University under the supervision of Dr. Jenney Coull at Aix-Marseille University and Dr. Ron Mangun at UC Davis. Currently, he is conducting research on the mechanisms and neural correlates of suppression using eye tracking and EEG, under the co-supervision of Dr. Joy Geng and Dr. Ron Mangun.
Undergraduate Students
Haiye Liu
Hey, my name is Haiye, and I am a fourth-year cognitive science major and I am interested in studying attention mechanisms and their applications in real life.
Ak Prathipati
Ak is a 2nd year Neuroscience, Physiology, & Behavior major researching how people move their eyes as they learn face and scene associations.
Rishit Das
Rishit is a 2nd year Computational Cognitive Science major with a keen interest in making VR environments user-centered. Presently, he is investigating search patterns in naturalistic VR environments with Shea.
Neel Majmudar
Neel is a 1st-year computational cognitive science major with an interest in Artificial Intelligence and is currently working on classifying distractibility, curiosity, and ADHD via ML methods based on VR data with Shea.
Carley Smith
Carley Smith is a second-year undergraduate at UC Davis majoring in Cognitive Science. She is originally from East Greenville, Pennsylvania, and has an interest in studying human memory and cognition. In her free time, Carley enjoys playing lacrosse, reading, and watching sports.