Luis began his research journey at NYU Tandon, earning a BS in Science and Technology Studies while working under Dr. Marisa Carrasco and Dr. Rachel Denison on temporal attention research, and Dr. Jonathan Bain on philosophy of physics research. He briefly worked under Dr. Frank Tong at Vanderbilt University on face perception and memory research as well. He then earned his PhD from the Graduate Program for Neuroscience at Boston University working under Dr. Sam Ling, where he investigated how attention and emotion influence the processing of fundamental visual features like spatial frequency, measured via fMRI-based models of population-level tuning. For his postdoc, he will investigate the influence of sensory history on the perception and processing of spatial frequency by employing a combination of psychophysics, fMRI, and EEG approaches. His postdoctoral work is supported by the NIH Blueprint D-SPAN K00 Award. 

Sunyoung earned her B.A. in Psychology and M.S. in Cognitive Sciences at Yonsei University, where she worked with Dr. Do-Joon Yi, on the effects of familiarity on memory. She also worked as a lab manager in Dr. Won Mok Shim’s lab, studying various effects of feedback on visual perception and how they are reflected in the brain using fMRI. At UCSD, she is excited to continue her research on neural mechanisms underlying top-down influences, such as attention or expectation, on perception. In her spare time, she enjoys watching horror movies and weightlifting.

Holly is a Ph.D. student in the Psychology Department. She earned her B.S. in Neuroscience at UCLA, where she worked in a concussion research lab led by Dr. Chris Giza. Next, she worked as a lab manager at the Stanford Vision and Perception Neuroscience Lab led by Dr. Kalanit Grill-Spector measuring how the brain and visual perception change across development. At UCSD, Holly is excited to continue exploring the visual system and its neural mechanisms, especially attention and perception. Outside of the lab, she enjoys all things outdoors including running, skiing, and nature photography. 

Yixin / Stella is a third-year Neuroscience PhD student in the Serences and Aoi labs. She received a B.S. in Neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University, where she completed an honors thesis on cell-type specific epigenetic markers of aging under the direction of Dr. Andreas Pfenning. She then received training at the Marcus Autism Center with Dr. Ami Klin, Dr. Warren Jones and Dr. Hasse Walum to parse heterogeneity within Autism Spectrum Disorder from longitudinal clinical assessments and eye-tracking data. At UCSD, Stella is interested in investigating how neural representations of visual experiences evolve over time, and how the brain can maintain stable interpretations of the world given these changes in neural activity. 

Muha (left): Overall, this manuscript was SO, SO interesting! I think my co-reviewer Dali would be ESPECIALLY interested in the claim that orange cats are especially sensitive need more affection than other cats. But overall, I have very few comments, SUPER COOL!

Dali (right): Whatever the reviewer Muha recommends? Do THE OPPOSITE.

I fear I must decline this review request, as I have very little bandwidth. My schedule is packed with early morning naps, late morning naps, afternoon naps, early evening playtime with bespoke toys, late evenings of staring menacingly out the window, and middle of the night naps.