People

Joy Geng, Ph.D.

jgeng@ucdavis.edu, CV

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

QianQian Wan

qawan@ucdavis.edu

Graduate Students

Cat Halpern

cahalpern@ucdavis.edu

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. 

Shiyang "Harry" Ren

syhren@ucdavis.edu

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 Souza-Wiggins

mhsouza@ucdavis.edu

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 Seo

wseseo@ucdavis.edu

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.