Lab Members
Principal Investigator
David Badre
Professor
Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences
Carney Institute for Brain Science at Brown University
Investigators
Apoorva Bhandari
Investigator
Email: apoorva_bhandari@brown.edu; curriculum vitae
Research Interests: I am broadly interested in understanding the neural and computational basis of flexible human cognition. My work addresses questions from a broad range of topics including fluid intelligence, working memory, learning & generalization, cognitive control, and social decision making, employing behavioral methods, functional MRI, computational modeling and machine learning. I’m currently investigating the role of neural representational geometry in enabling flexible cognition, with a particular focus on prefrontal cortex representations of task information.
Post-Doctoral Fellows
Ladan Shahshahani
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Research Interests: I am interested in understanding the neural mechanisms underlying perceptual memory. In a collaborative project with “3D Information for Perception and Action Lab”, we aim to bring together two seemingly disconnected fields of research: 3D perception and visual working memory. We explore computational theories of visual perception incorporating psychophysical methods and fMRI.
Atsushi Kikumoto
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Email: atsushi_kikumoto@brown.edu; curriculum vitae
Research Interests: I am interested in the dynamic process in which control-related representations are shaped to achieve flexible behavior. I hope to investigate how we generate and link abstract knowledge to specific action contexts in working memory.
Graduate Students

Haley Keglovits
Graduate Student
Email: haley_keglovits@brown.edu; website
Research Interests: I am interested in how the brain formats information as it guides difficult cognitive processes like multitasking. Using fMRI and behavioral data, I hope to create testable computational models that further our understanding of what enables the amazing flexibility of the human mind.
Ziqi Zhao
Graduate Student
Email: ziqi_zhao1@brown.eduResearch Interests: I am interested in how people adapt or transfer control policies learned from one context to another. I am using both neural and computational methods to investigate the underlying mechanisms that support the learning and adapting cognitive control.
Research Assistant/Lab Manager

Defne Buyukyazgan
Lab Manager
Broadly, I am interested in human skill learning and how it is shaped by powerful biological constraints imposed by the human brain. I work on trying to understand how the human brain represents and responds to contextual learning/performance demands and how people benefit from training to address these demands. I am hopeful that tackling these issues can one day benefit educational experiences of others.
Undergraduate Research Assistants

Camille Aquino
camille_aquino@brown.edu

Tanvi Palsamudram
tanvi_palsamudram@brown.edu

Elizabeth Doss
elizabeth_doss@brown.edu

Roshan Parikh
roshan_parikh@brown.edu
Samira Lakhiani
Abigail Aronson
Shay Yu
Lab Alums
Avinash Vaidya
Post-doctoral Researcher (through 2022)
Emily Chicklis
Lab Manager (2019 – 2022)
Olga Lositsky
Post-doc (2017 – 2020)
Emily Levin
Graduate Student Researcher (thru 2021)
Ijeoma Uche
Undergraduate RA (thru 2021)
Emily Smith-Feldman
Undergraduate RA (thru 2021)
Isabel Reyes
Undergraduate RA (thru 2021)
Amanda Ng
Undergraduate RA (thru 2021)
Johanny Castillo
Post-Baccalaureate Researcher (thru 2020) & Food Reviewer
Michelle Kassel
Clinical Psychology Resident (thru 2020)
Michelle Zhu
Undergraduate RA (thru 2020)
Yael Braverman
Undergraduate RA & Honors Student (thru 2020)
Thesis Presentation
Emily Waters
Undergraduate RA & Honors Student (thru 2020)
Thesis Presentation
Adriane Spiro
Manager of Labs (thru Summer 2020) & Baker of Cakes
Ramses Ngachoko
Undergraduate RA (Summer 2020)
Rachael Blackman
Psychiatry Resident (thru 2020)
Karina Ortiz
Undergraduate RA (thru 2019)
Jordan Rubin-McGregor
Undergraduate RA (thru 2019)
Henry Jones
Undergraduate RA (thru 2019)
Aurelie Schaison
Undergraduate RA (thru 2018)
Ceyda Sayali
Graduate Student (thru 2018)