Matthew Agosto
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 recently graduated from Bard with a degree in psychology and a concentration in Science, Technology, and Society. They were 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 is 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 their free time, they write plays and novels and compete at debate tournaments across the country/world. They are 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, they hope to become a professor and continue to contribute to academic discussions and psychological research. Clarence is now the Assistant Debate Coach at the University of Rochester and was recently accepted to the Master’s program in English at the University of Rochester.
Eleanor Broughton
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.
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 now enrolled in a Leadership for Educational Change master’s program at the Bank Street College of Education as he works toward developing an alternative, well-being based model of public education.
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.
Min He
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
Charlie is currently a research assistant at Columbia University.
Levi Lowe
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 an Associate Data Engineer at Collective Measures.
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.
Shira Prusky
Abigail Rauso
Rachael Rice
Anna Richard
Luke Sandbank
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 is currently a Behavioral Research Fellow at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
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.
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).
