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
Graduate Students
Atakan Atamer is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience program. His research focuses on the role of intuitions in reasoning, situational factors that influence receptiveness to belief-conflicting information, and individual differences in thinking styles and how these differences predict daily judgment and decision-making. In his spare time, he plays tennis while imagining he’s better at it than he actually is
Emily Yerrington is a PhD candidate in the Combined Program in Educational and Psychology (CPEP) at the University of Michigan. She integrates methods from psychology, education, and data science to examine teacher and parent attitudes toward executive function (EF) and their implications for classroom learning. Her current projects include the FLUX study, which examines how variability in children’s daily experiences influences EF growth, and the development of a novel survey measuring parent and teacher beliefs about EF and its malleability. Emily is particularly interested in educational methods–such as Montessori–impact children’s cognitive development.
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 current lab projects include topics on vaccine hesitancy, conflict adaptation between cognitive tasks, and the scientific reasoning and study skills of college students. 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, performing at local drag shows, 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
- Abigail Dafinescu
- Elizabeth Grace Forsell
- Melanie Hirsch
- Katherine Komon
- Olivia Pinto
- Abigail Schad
- Sydney Sharp
- 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
- Jahla Osborne, Postdoctoral Researcher, Northeastern University
- Dr. Madison Fansher, Research Assistant Professor, University of Michigan Medicine
- 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
- Sarah Cortez De-La Cruz – Research Assistant
- Sam Gomez – Research Assitant
- Brooke Sherman – Research Assistant
- Lauren Brabrand, Research Assistant
- 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!
