Researchers of Emory

Thomas Xia is a recent graduate who majored in Chemistry and Economics. He was awarded a Fall 2016 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on the role a certain bacteria plays in the inflammation response after intestinal injury under Dr. Ashfaqul Alam.   When I first began looking for opportunities to be involved in scientific research during my freshman year, my main goal was to find an area of research that really sparked my interest. I eventually began working in Dr. Neish’s lab within the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Emory School of Medicine starting the second semester of freshman year. The field of biomedical research definitely felt very foreign when I first began, but under the mentorship of the lab, I gradually became more independent. I eventually began to formulate my own hypotheses and subsequently testing them through innovative experiments that my mentors and I designed together.   

Bethanie Tabachnik is a senior majoring in Quantitative Sciences and minoring in Linguistics. She was awarded a Fall 2016 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on the brain's ability to identify handwriting and faces under Dr. Daniel Dilks.   Hi! My name is Bethanie Tabachnik and I’m a college junior from Cleveland, OH majoring in Quantitative Sciences on the NBB track and minoring in Linguistics. I’ve been doing research in the Dilks lab since Fall 2015, and my current project is an fMRI study examining how the brain processes identity – specifically handwriting and faces.

Lokita Rajan is a senior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology and Economics. She was awarded a Fall 2016 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on auditory imagery under Dr. Simon Lacey. My research is in neurology.  I am looking at how people perceive sounds based on their levels of musical experience .  I am recruiting musicians who are affiliated with Emory in some way, so they are either music majors or are members of an Emory University music ensemble, such as the Symphony Orchestra , Concert Choir , or University Chorus .  I am also recruiting individuals with no musical experience to take part in my study.  While the research grant has made it a lot easier to attract participants since I can now offer them a financial incentive to participate in my study, I have still found it difficult to recruit people with the appropriate levels of musical experience.  Relatively few musicians have answered my flyers inviting research participants, though I p

Sami Yousif is a 2016 graduate who majored in Psychology. He was awarded a Spring 2016 Conference Grant which he used to attend the 2016 Cognitive Development Society meeting. Over fall break, I attended the meeting of the Cognitive Development Society (CDS) in Columbus, Ohio. This was my first time attending a development conference. I was particularly excited about the spatial-thinking preconference, facilitated by prominent researchers in the field of spatial cognition including David Uttal , Susan Levine , and Nora Newcombe . I was fortunate to have the opportunity to discuss my work with these professors.

Madeline Nagel is a recent graduate who majored in Psychology and Chinese Language and Literature. She was awarded a Fall 2016 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on cognitive bias under Dr. Scott Lilienfeld. This semester was a lesson in Murphy’s Law as it applies to research: Everything that can go wrong, will. However, it has also been an incredible opportunity to learn how to overcome anything the world can throw at me.