Principal Investigator
Dr. Priti Shah
Priti Shah is the Psychology Department Chair and is a Professor in the Department of Psychology, the School of Information, and the School of Education at University of Michigan. She is also a Faculty Associate in the Research Center for Group Dynamics of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. She received her BA from the University of North Carolina and her PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 1996. She directs the Basic and Applied Cognition Laboratory. Her research focuses on higher level cognition (thinking, reasoning, problem solving), the basic cognitive mechanisms supporting these abilities (executive functions, attention), and educational application. She has edited 3 volumes and published over 70 articles and chapters. Her work has been funded by the Institute for Educational Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Office of Naval Research, the Spencer Foundation, and the James S. McDonnell Foundation. She is an Associate Editor at Memory & Cognition and has served on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Educational Psychology and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. She has received awards for her research, mentoring, and teaching. Priti cares deeply about the intersection high quality educational science and values and thus she founded this website and invited cognitive science experts, teachers, and others to share their knowledge and insights.
Post Docs
Dr. Madison Fansher completed her undergraduate education at Purdue University and graduate training at University of Michigan. She is broadly interested in topics related to complex cognition and is especially interested in developing interventions to improve reasoning and decision-making. In her work she also examines individual differences in willingness to exert cognitive effort.
Graduate Students
Atakan Atamer is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience program. In his recent research, he investigates whether experiencing processing difficulty promotes analytical reasoning. His primary interest lies in topics related to reasoning, judgment and decision-making, and mental effort.
Jahla Osborne is a fifth year PhD student in the Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience program. Her current research examines individual differences in ADHD as it relates to internal and external distraction. She is especially interested in studying the phenomenon Hyperfocus within ADHD as well. Jahla plans to receive postdoctoral training at Northeastern University after graduation.
Emily Yerrington is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Combined Program in Educational Psychology.
Yuxin Liu is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience program.
Lab Manager
Sarah Mia Liberatore is a lab manager for three Cognitive labs in the Psychology department. She graduated from Oberlin College in 2023, where she studied Psychology and Biology. Their research interests include clinical diagnostic paradigms, particularly as they pertain to neurodivergent and queer individuals, and they are excited to see what a cognitive approach can teach us about processing and decision making. Sarah can often be found bird watching, dancing, or staring at colorful spreadsheets.
Current Undergraduate and Post-Bacc Research Assistants
- Julian Marchionda – Independent Study Student
- Angelina Yang – Independent Study Student
- Raegen Perttunen – Post-Bacc Researcher
- Lauren Brabrand
- Sarah Cortez De-La Cruz
- Abigail Dafinescu
- Elizabeth Grace Forsell
- Sam Gomez
- Melanie Hirsch
- Katherine Komon
- Al Long
- Olivia Pinto
- Abigail Schad
- Sydney Sharp
- Brooke Sherman – Post-Bacc Researcher
- Rongxuan Tian
- Kanika Verma
Current and Former University of Michigan Collaborators
- Susan Gelman
- Colleen Seifert
- Stephanie Preston
- John Jonides
- Richard Gonzalez
- Eytan Adar
- Richard Lewis
Current and Former Collaborators from Other Institutions
- David Uttal, Northwestern
- Shaylene Nancekivell, UNC Greensboro
- Akira Miyake, UC Boulder
- Benjamin Katz, Virginia Tech
- Susanne Jaeggi, UC Irvine
- Steve Franconeri, Northwestern
- Martin Buschkuel, Mind Research Institute
- Aysecan Boduroglu, Bogazici University
- Jessica Witt, Colorado State
Former PhD Students,Post-Doctoral Fellows, and Research Scientists
- Audrey Michal, Assistant Professor,University of Michigan – Flint
- Holly White, Independent Research Scientist
- Xin Sun, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of British Columbia
- Tessa Abagis, Research Specialist, California Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council
- Han Zhang, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Michigan
- Alex Caple, Faculty, Providence College
- Amira Ibrahim, Assistant Professor, CSUCI
- Kathleen Hupfeld, PhD Student, University of Florida
- Benjamin Katz, Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech
- Zuowei Wang, Research Scientist, ETS
- Rebecca Rhodes, Quantitative UX Researcher, Meta
- Ronit Greenberg, CRLT, University of Michigan
- Martin Buschkuel, Mind Research Institute
- Susanne Jaeggi, UC Irvine
- Shaylene Nancekivell, UNC Greensboro
- Meredith Minear, Associate Professor, University of Wyoming
- Aysecan Boduroglu, Professor, Bogacizi University
- Marie Burrage, Director of Research and Decision Support, Questrom School of Business, Boston University
- Fernando Rodriguez, Assistant Professor of Teaching, University of California, Irvine
- Holly White, Research Scientist, University of Michigan
Former Undergraduate and Masters Students
- Grace DesJardins, Honor’s Student, UM Institute for Social Research
- Vidhiyaa Harish, Research Assistant
- Rima Abdulrahman, Honor’s Student
- Rachel Beiter, Honor’s Student
- Anusha Santhapur, Honor’s Student, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
- Jiachen He, Honor’s Student, Northwestern
- Jamie Trepeck, Research Assistant
- Lily Johnston, Honors Student, MPH Student at Yale
- Simran Wadhwa, Research Assistant
- Melissa Durante, Honors Student
- Azeem Sajjad, Research Assistant
- Maxwell Lewis, Research Assistant
- Jeffrey Moher (currently Visiting Assistant Professor at Williams College)
- Annalyn Ng, Honor’s Student
- Alexandria Wiliams, Honor’s Student
- Rebecca Atkinson, Honor’s Student
- Atasi Satpathy, Honor’s Student
- Mohammad Rahman, Research Assistant
- Ulrike Biangardi
- Johanna Bromberg
- Emily Kaplan, Research Assistant
- Gillian Graifman, Research Assistant
- please send me a bio and photo if you’d like to be included on this page– I’d love to list you!
