Matthew Agosto
Cillian Ahearn
Rahma Ahmed
Ishbel Ayala
Alexandra Batzdorf
Now graduated from Bard, Alexandra is a Research Coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.
Eleonora Beier
Born in Italy, Eleonora came to the United States in 2012 to study at Bard College. Here, she majored in Psychology with a concentration in Mind, Brain and Behavior. While her research interests include memory, grounded cognition and psycholinguistics, she has recently focused on the topic of music cognition. As a pianist, she is fascinated by how music can express emotion, and whether this expression can cross cultural boundaries. In her senior project, she investigated the chill response, a sharp increase in arousal often experienced as a shiver down the spine, in Western classical and traditional Chinese music across different populations. She is now attending graduate school at the University of California, Davis, under the supervision of Fernanda Ferreira and supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Her career goal is to conduct her own research as a principal investigator.
David Benson
In Psychology, David is especially interested in neuroscience, cognition, and the field of abnormal psychology. In Economics, David is interested in macroeconomics and the problems that arise from poor economic management in the U.S. David also worked as one of the directors in the Student Resources Group and was responsible for running the Saferide program at Bard. He also organized the intramural basketball league at Bard, as he is an avid basketball and Boston Celtics fan.
Bridget Bertoldi
Bridget graduated from the Bard College Conservatory of Music two years ago with degrees in psychology and flute performance. She then served as the Psychology Program Coordinator at Bard for a year before starting her PhD in Clinical-Forensic Psychology at Florida State University. Her senior thesis explored the effects of reactive and proactive aggression on heart rate reactivity to an anger induction paradigm in male college students. Bridget is particularly interested in biologically-based prevention and intervention of antisocial behavior, violence prevention, forensic assessment, and psychopathy.
Vasvi Bhutani
Vasvi became affiliated with the lab during the course of a three-year science research program she was undertaking at Spackenkill High School. After completing her research project investigating the influence of distraction on memory, she matriculated at Northeastern University.
Elena Botts
Elena recently graduated from Bard with a degree in Global & International Studies and a concentration in Mind, Brain, & Behavior. She wants to explore how the psyche can influence society. She is also a visual artist and poet, who has been exhibited a few times and published prolifically. Always she hopes to do something of significance for the wide world. Elena will be attending Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies as a Master’s student.
Clarence A. L. Brontë
Clarence graduated from Bard with a degree in psychology and a concentration in Science, Technology, and Society. He was very excited to work in the Memory Dynamics Lab, as it is a wonderful way to become more familiar with ERP techniques and experimental design and implementation. Outside of the lab, Clarence was also a Writing Fellow and Writing Consultant in the Bard Learning Commons, the Team Captain of the Bard Debate Union, a 2016 and 2017 Citizen Science Teaching Fellow, a member of the Student Government Educational Policies Committee, and a Statistics for Psychology Course Assistant. In his free time, he writes plays and novels and competed at debate tournaments across the country/world. He is very interested in the nature of resting state cognition, the effects of experimental techniques on behavioral and neurological data, the nature of self formation, and the role of cognitive science in society. In the long term, he hopes to become a professor and continue to contribute to academic discussions and psychological research. Clarence since became the Assistant Debate Coach at the University of Rochester and completed the Master’s program in English there, as well. Clarence now has returned to Bard to serve as the Program Coordinator for the OSUN Global Debate Network.
Eleanor Broughton
Sherry Chowdhury
Sherry is now pursing a Masters in Counseling for Mental Health and Wellness at NYU.
Olivia Couture
Olivia Couture is a Junior Psychology major here at Bard College. She is interested in neuroscience and is on the Pre-health track. Most of her courses include Psychology and Biology classes, with the hope of attending Physician Assistant school after Bard. Outside of the lab Olivia is a Supervisor in Training on the EMS squad, a member of the Bard Cares Team, and a member of the Women’s Basketball team. In her free time Olivia works as an EMT for the Tivoli Fire Department, and enjoys hanging out with friends and family.
Bianca DePeitro
Bianca has since accepted a position as a research assistant for the Center for Healthy Weight and Wellness at Washington University in St. Louis.
Zhamal Dzhumashova
Dylan Earp
Morgan Evans
Morgan was a Computer Science major at Bard, as well as a Student Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center, a Student Technician for Bard IT, and Captain of Bard’s Equestrian Team. She enjoys Alpine skiing, singing Baroque arias, and playing with her Singapura cat named Miso. Now graduated, she is joining Travis Breaux’s lab at Carnegie Mellon University as a Ph.D. student.
Katarina Ferrucci
Now graduated from Bard, Kat will be pursuing her Master’s in Behavioral and Social Health Sciences at Brown University. She has recently been accepted into the Ph.D. program in Clinical and Population Research at UMass.
Elizabeth Fitzgerald
Now graduated from Bard, Elizabeth is now a PhD student at Florida State University.
Nora Grace-Flood, Operations Manager Emeritus
Nora Grace-Flood graduated Bard with a degree in Psychology in 2021 after serving as the lab’s Operations Manager. She is interested in exploring cognition, whether from the perspective of neuroscience, language, biology, or anthropology. Outside of the lab, Nora was also the director of the Teaching Kitchen, which facilitates professional and student-lead cooking classes around campus, and a writing fellow at the Bard Learning Commons. You could also find her making mediocre coffees at Sawkill on Thursday nights. Unlike the rest of the lab assistants, and to the dismay of her pet cat, she is strictly a dog person.
Mike Greenberg, Lab Manager Emeritus
Mike graduated Bard in 2020. He is interested in education and motivation, in particular the mental health impacts of academics-centered education on children. His senior project investigated into the evolutionary basis of learning and how psychological well-being underpins the human ability to learn. He is working toward developing an alternative, well-being based model of public education. He is working toward a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology at Texas A&M.
Yifan Gu
Yifan graduated in 2020. She is especially interested in studying judgment and decision making, stereotypes and mind perception using tools of psychology. She is currently investigating the connection between auditory language and morality. Outside the lab, you can find her doing sketches and illustrations and working with cables and audio mixers as a Sound Crew member.
Giorgi Gzirishvili
I am an undergraduate student at Bard college, majoring at psychological science. My main interests areneuroscience and social psychology, with a special interest in how these two relate to each other. Otherthan psychology, things I love the most include reading books and hiking.
Min He
Dayveliz Hernandez Muztafa
Zall Hirschstein, Lab Manager Emeritus
Zall is a recent Bard College graduate who is currently a research technician in Sr. Patricia Grasso’s lab at Albany Medical College. While Zall’s senior thesis focused on building a machine-learning based neurofeedback paradigm to improve learning, his interests are eclectic: How are features of cognition bound together in the brain? How does stress bias the nervous system? What are the limits of augmenting cognition? What distinguishes the human memory system from non-human animals’? How will new computational techniques and big neuroscience reveal the inner working of the brain? When outside the lab, Zall is often found traveling the world in search of profoundly uncomfortable experiences, playing ultimate frisbee, building his furniture, designing graphics, and critiquing movies for not being realistic enough.
Zien Hodge
Ying Huang
Ying was a major in Philosophy and Film studies at Bard. Her interest lies in Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Science in general. Now graduated, she is a graduate student at Brown University studying philosophy.
Danielle Iserlis
Danielle is now a Healthcare Account Coordinator at Cohn & Wolfe.
Evan Jacoby
Evan is set to begin a graduate program in journalism at University of Southern California.
Charles Leighton
After completing a research assistantship at Columbia University, Charlie became a Master’s student in psychology at Stony Brook University.
Noah Libby, Lab Manager Emeritus
Noah graduated with a Psychology degree in 2019. His senior thesis fell within the realm of computational cognitive neuroscience, aiming to isolate oscillatory signatures of memory competition at the time of encoding and refine a machine-learning classifier that will use this information to make better informed predictions concerning the long-term fate of learned material. Outside of the lab, Noah could be found captaining Bard’s Ultimate Frisbee team, repurposing unwanted technology, writing music, learning how to capture moments through photography, and drinking a gallon of water every day. He is now a Junior Data Scientist at RubiconMD.
Levi Lowe
Alex Luscher
Jack Machen
Gitta Marko
Gitta is pursuing her Masters in Mental Health at the University of Edinburgh.
Sean Murphy
Sean is originally from Long Island and came to attend Bard College in 2014 to study Psychology. His research interests include sleep rhythms, personality, and abnormal psychology, though as an intended medical student Sean is also keenly interested in medicinal research for psychiatric treatment. As an aspiring psychiatrist, Sean intends to conduct research for improved diagnosis and treatment methods of commonplace psychiatric disorders such as ADD. He is currently a research coordinator at the Feinstein Institute.
Danielle Nordenberg
Anna Obbagy
Anna is set to begin her graduate work in performance psychology at the University of Edinburgh.
Chandler O’Reardon, Personnel Manager Emeritus
Chandler O’Reardon graduated Bard in 2021 with a degree in Psychology after serving as the lab’s Personnel Manager. She is interested in the cognitive/neuroscience and developmental branches of psychology, in particular how bilingualism impacts cognition. Her senior thesis investigated how learning a second language through a bilingual education affects the executive functioning skills of children with autism. Outside of the lab, she also worked as a box office ticketing agent at the Fisher Center for Performing Arts and is a gymnastics coach back in her hometown. She is starting as a graduate student in speech-language pathology at Southern Connecticut State University.
Gabriel Profumo
Shira Prusky
Abigail Rauso
Rachael Rice
Rachael is now a Clinical Research Coordinator in Colorectal Surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Anna Richard
Jess Rylander, Assistant Lab Manager Emeritus
Jess graduated Bard with a degree in Psychology in the spring of 2022, having served as the lab’s Assistant Manager. She is interested in exploring humanbehavior, memory and cognition, whether it is through studies in the lab or by wayof everyday observations of people in the real world. Her senior project investigated the relationship between emotion and memory. Outside of the lab, Jess served as a BRAVE Counselor on-call, as well as a member of the Women’s Basketball team. You will likely find Jess with her air pods in, listening to music any free moment she has, while simultaneously fueling her pretty severe coffee addiction (always iced, of course!). After Bard, Jess is joining the Human Intelligence Team at Edelman DXI, a global, multidisciplinary research, analytics consulting firm.
Luke Sandbank
Katlynn Shamro
Katlynn Shamro graduated with a Psychology degree in 2021. She is interested in the neurobiology of abnormal child development, child education, and human services. Outside of the lab, Katlynn also worked as a substitute teachers’ aide at The Center for Spectrum Services and was a member of the Bard Women’s Basketball team. In her free time, you might find her creating art, riding her bike, or if we are being honest, guiltily watching bad tv shows. Katlynn is now embarking on graduate work at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Shuai Shao
Anastasia Sielski-Elizalde
Since graduating, Anastasia became Bard College’s Wellness Coordinator.
Tong Su
Tong graduated with a Psychology degree in 2019. She is interested in the self-other asymmetries, automaticity, and the mediating effects of gender in social life. Through further work, she hopes to strengthen her knowledge of ethics, statistics, computer science, and cognitive psychology. She completed a Behavioral Research Fellowship at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management before accepting a Ph.D. studentship in behavioral marketing at Stanford University.
Sara Such
Aiana Tazabekova
Mady Thuyein
Rayo Verweij
Rayo graduated in 2020 with a major in Computer Science and a concentration in Mind, Brain, and Behavior. He is mainly interested in computational linguistics and the use of artificial intelligence in education. In the lab, he helped out by building tools to automate the most tedious parts of the experiment workflow. Outside, you could find him at the Bard Debate Union or in one of the most hidden corners of the library. Rayo is now headed to the University of Edinburgh for his MSc in Cognitive Science.
Ophelia Wang
Lindsey Williams
Lindsey is a senior at Bard hoping to pursue a double-major in Music and Psychology. Lindsey is intrigued by everything related to psychology and research, and would one day like to explore the relationship between music and the brain. In her free time, Lindsey likes to hike, travel, and play with her kitten.
Luoxuan (Vivian) Zhu
Since graduating, Vivian is now a Master’s student at Columbia University’s Data Science Institute.
Zongheng Zhang, Lab Manager Emeritus
Zongheng completed his degree in the Bard College Conservatory of Music. He double majored in music performance and Psychology, concentrating in Mind, Brain, and Behavior. He is interested in cognitive psychology, neuroscience and the relationship between memory reactivation and the body’s stress response. He wants to work more on coding and programming in psychology studies. He also served as assistant for the International Students Office and publishing editor for Bard College Chinese Channel. For his next step, Zongheng will be attending the University of Texas at Austin to continue his graduate studies in music. There, he also intends to work in the Human Brain Stimulation and Electrophysiology Lab with Dr. Buchanan.
Ellie Zimmerman
Ellie graduated in 2020 with a joint-major in psychology and biology. As someone involved in both fields, Ellie is particularly interested in how evolution via natural and artificial selection may drive the development of adaptive versus maladaptive behavior. Her other activities on campus included playing the violin, peer counseling on BRAVE, and walking various dogs. (No hate to cats; I like them too, you just can’t walk them – not that I know this from personal experience or anything).
