People

John Serences - Principal Investigator

John is a UCSD alum and worked with Prof. Hal Pashler as an undergraduate. He moved to Johns Hopkins for grad school and worked with Prof. Steve Yantis, and then moved to the Salk Institute to do a postdoc with Dr. Geoff Boynton.

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Luis Ramirez - Postdoc

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.

Holly Kular - Grad Student

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.

Leah Ettensohn - Grad Student

Leah is a PhD student in the Psychology Department. She earned her B.S. in Cognitive Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University. Leah completed her undergraduate honors thesis in the lab of Dr. Marlene Behrmann, where she studied plasticity in the visual system. She then received a post-bac IRTA fellowship to study visuomotor perception at the NIH under Drs. Leslie Ungerleider and Chris Baker. At UCSD, Leah is excited to continue studying visual and multimodal perception, particularly within the context of working memory. Leah enjoys pilates, being outdoors, and spending time with her cat.

Yixin Yuan - Grad Student

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.

Isabella Longoria-Valenzuela - Grad Student

Isabella is a first-year Psychology PhD student in the Brady and Serences labs. She earned her B.A. in Cognitive Neuroscience at Brown University, where she conducted computational visual perception research with Dr. Thomas Serre. She is interested in leveraging computational tools to investigate the intersection between visual perception, working memory, and long-term visual memory. When she is not in lab, Isabella enjoys eating french fries, doing yoga, and listening to podcasts.

Lena Kemmelmeier - Grad Student

Lena is a Psychology PhD student. She earned her B.S. in Neuroscience and Psychology from the University of Nevada, Reno, where she worked with Drs. Marian Berryhill and Sarah Haigh, studying sensory sensitivity and working memory in concussion and schizotypy using behavioral and EEG methods. At UCSD, she is excited to apply computational approaches to investigate visual attention and working memory. Outside the lab, Lena enjoys thrifting, playing the clarinet, traveling, and listening to podcasts.

Chattarin Poungtubtim

Chattarin (Pun) is a PhD student in the Brady and Serences labs. He recently completed his M.D. from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. During medical school years, he liked to sneak out and study biases in working memory with Dr. Chaipat Chunharas. He’s interested in studying how humans use memory to imagine, think and plan by using a combination of psychophysical experiments, neuroimaging techniques and computational modeling. When he's not in the lab, you can find him walking on the street and taking some weird random photos.

Hannah Harris - Postbac

Hannah is a recent graduate from UC San Diego, where she earned a B.S. in Psychology and Cognitive Science. During her undergraduate studies, she worked with Dr. Dave Barner exploring how children learn language and acquire number knowledge. She hopes to continue investigating multimodal perception and deepen her interests through future graduate studies. Outside of the lab, she enjoys watching reality TV, wakesurfing, and playing the guitar.

Anika Bhandari - Research Assistant

Anika is ongoing her second year as a Research Assistant at Serences Lab. She is a fourth year undergraduate studying Neurobiology at UCSD. Outside of lab and school, Anika enjoys painting, traveling, and photography.

If the Serences Lab Pets were our reviewers...

Ricky

...Relatedly, the authors failed to cite literature on the benefits of string cheese in canine diets (see Ricky, 2020; Ricky 2021a, Ricky 2021b, Ricky 2022, Ricky 2023, Ricky, 2024), an oversight I find problematic and that limits the rigor of this manuscript.

Memorable quote: "Don't tell me what to do John, there was a non-zero probability that the thing I just ate was an organic compound containing valuable calories. How else could I know for sure?"

Muha and Dali

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.

Iris

My main point of consideration is on the authors’ use of figures. Currently, readers cannot sniff or roll around in the figures. Scratch & Sniff figures would be useful, particularly given the broad readership of the journal.

Celeste

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.

Diego

While this manuscript is well-written and covers an interesting topic, it contains several critical flaws and needs substantial revision, as well as additional experiments. Of course, I am also open to accepting the manuscript as-is for boiled chicken...

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