(Top Row, L to R) Tara O’Sullivan, Ellie Travers, Daniel Kang, Laila Johnston, Annika McDermott-Hinman, Yanwan Zhu, Amanda Martino
(Bottom Row, L to R) Roman Feiman, Lila Feiman, Julia Ceccarelli, Isabelle Boun

Principal Investigator

Roman Feiman

Roman received his PhD in Psychology from Harvard University in 2015. He completed his postdoctoral work at Harvard and UC San Diego before coming to Brown. His work draws on a variety of approaches and methods from cognitive developmental psychology, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and formal semantics. Roman directs the Brown Language and Thought Lab.

Roman’s CV

Lab Manager

Amanda Martino

Amanda received her Bachelor’s degree in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience from Western University in Canada and completed a clinical Master’s of Health Science degree in Speech-Language Pathology from the University of Toronto. She is currently the lab manager of the BLT Lab. Outside of the lab, she enjoys cooking, reading, and being outdoors.

Postdoctoral Fellow

Gabor Brody

Gabor’s research explores infants’ and children’s ability to keep track of the identity of objects, agents, and other entities. He defended his dissertation in 2020 at the Cognitive Development Center of Central European University. During his PhD, he also conducted research at the Harvard Lab for Developmental Studies and at RICO (Universitat Pompeu Fabra).

Website: www.gaborbrody.com

Graduate Students

Yanwan Zhu

Before coming to Brown, Yanwan was an undergraduate at Smith College majoring in Linguistics and Statistical & Data Sciences. While working with Prof. Jill de Villiers at Smith, she developed her interest in studying the relationship between language and thought. Currently, she is interested in using experiments and corpus studies to understand how children and adults represent – or learn to represent – complex meanings of linguistic constructions in their mind. When she’s not doing science, Yanwan enjoys everything music-related and spending time with her cat Seraphina.

Annika McDermott-Hinman

Annika received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, where she studied Linguistics, with a secondary concentration in Computer Science. She is interested in understanding how children learn the complex ways that concepts and their linguistic expressions combine to create meaning. Outside of academics, Annika enjoys reading, playing board games, and meeting new people. Website: https://annikamh406.github.io/

Laila Johnston

Laila is a PhD Student in Cognitive Science interested in the computational mechanisms of human question asking. More specifically, how question asking can provide insights into the kinds of knowledge and models humans have of the world. Laila received a B.S. in Mathematics with minors in Computer Science and Philosophy at the University of Central Florida, and is a NSF Graduate Research Fellow.

Sam McGrath

Sam is a 5th year Ph.D. candidate in the philosophy department (A.B.D.) who has just started a Sc.M. in the department. He is interested in thought, language, and the relation between the two. He did his undergrad at the University of Chicago and an MPhil at Trinity College, Dublin. He has written on Frege, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, Davidson and a number of other central figures in the analytic tradition. In his free time, he likes to play basketball and surf.

Leadership Alliance Student

Fehintola Bankole

Fehintola is an undergraduate student at Xavier University of Louisiana majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in Health Communication. She is broadly interested in the intersection of language, culture, and cognition, particularly how bilingualism impacts brain development. She is excited to gain more hands-on research experience and explore new areas of cognitive science. Outside of academics, Fehintola enjoys reading, listening to music, traveling, and cooking.

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Minne Hatchuel

Minne (’27) is a sophomore at Brown concentrating in Psychology. She is interested in the intersection between clinical and developmental psychology, and is hoping to pursue a PhD in clinical or forensic psychology. Outside of classes, she enjoys reading, baking, doing crafts, and playing music with her band.

Julia Ceccarelli

Julia is a senior at Brown (’26) concentrating in Cognitive Science. She is interested in the development of language and cognition, especially as it pertains to broader claims about human evolution. Currently pursuing a thesis project in canine cognition, Julia enjoys exploring the links between human and animal communication. Outside the lab, she is often found fawning over the campus rabbits.