Principal Investigator
Elizabeth M. Brannon
Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Chair
Professor, Dept. of Psychology
Curriculum Vitae
Google Scholar
Email: ebrannon@sas.upenn.edu
Department Link: UPenn Department of Psychology
Dr. Elizabeth M. Brannon graduated Summa Cum Laude from The University of Pennsylvania, where she received her B.A. in Physical Anthropology in 1992. She received a Masters degree in Anthropology and a PhD in Psychology from Columbia University. She has been at Duke in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience since the year 2000 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008 and Full Professor in 2012. She is currently the Director of Graduate Studies for the Cognitive Neuroscience Admitting Program (CNAP) and the head of the developmental area within P&N. She maintains a secondary appointment in the department of Evolutionary Anthropology.
She has received numerous academic awards and honors including the Young Investigator Award from The Society for Experimental Psychology, a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, a Merck Scholar Award, and a James McDonnell Scholar Award. She is on the editorial board of Cognition, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, Psychological Science, and Infancy. Dr. Brannon’s research is funded by The National Institutes of Health and The National Science Foundation. Dr. Brannon teaches courses on cognitive development and comparative psychology and maintains two laboratories focused on quantitative cognition in nonhuman primates and human infants.
Post-Docs
Stephanie Bugden
Postdoctoral Associate
Email: sdbugden@sas.upenn.edu
Stephanie received her PhD from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, where she worked with Dr. Daniel Ansari. Her research focused on characterizing the numerical deficits of children with persistent dyscalculia, a specific math learning disorder, using both behavioral and functional neuroimaging tools. Her present work focuses on examining the neural plastic changes induced by approximate arithmetic training in both children and adults, and exploring the mechanisms underlying transfer effects of approximate arithmetic training on symbolic math.
Nick DeWind
Postdoctoral Associate
Email: dewind@sas.upenn.edu
Nick is broadly interested in neural computations and how perceptual codes become action codes. His present work focuses on the neural coding of numerosity in the posterior parietal area.
Graduate Students
Emily Szkudlarek
Graduate Student, University of Pennsylvania
Email: emilysz@sas.upenn.edu
Emily received her BS in Psychology from the University of Connecticut in 2012, where she worked in the labs of Dr. Whitney Tabor and Dr. Etan Markus studying learning from cognitive psychology and behavioral neuroscience perspectives. Between UConn and Duke Emily taught English as a foreign language at a public elementary school in Gyeongju, South Korea. She is interested in educational implications of nonsymbolic numerical representations, and in the growing field of educational neuroscience.
Rose Schneider
Graduate Student, University of Pennsylvania
Email: rosems@sas.upenn.edu
Research Associates
Yvette Almaguer
Lab Manager
Email: yalm@sas.upenn.edu
Yvette graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education in Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Development in 2011. She currently manages the Brannon Lab and works with Philadelphia schools as a liaison.
Maria Arevalo-Gonzalez
Research Assistant
Email: mareva@sas.upenn.edu
Chung Chae “Jenny”
Research Assistant
Email: chaec@sas.upenn.edu
Joe Dembik
Research Assistant
Email: jdembik@sas.upenn.edu
Andreas Nolan
Research Assistant
Email: andreasn@sas.upenn.edu
Elias Rappaport
Research Assistant
Email: erap@sas.upenn.edu
Luis Rosario
Research Assistant
Email: lrosario@sas.upenn.edu
Haobai Zhang
Research Assistant
Email: haobaiz@gse.upenn.edu
Brannon Lab Alumni
Former Graduate Students
Rosa Li, PhD, Duke, 2017
Postdoctoral associate for Duke’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University
Email: rosa.li@duke.edu
Rosa’s Website
Caroline Drucker, PhD, Duke, 2016
Email: caroline.drucker@duke.edu
Ariel Starr, PhD, Duke, 2015
Currently Postdoctoral Associate, UC Berkley
Sarah Jones, PhD, Duke, 2012
Assistant Professor, Berea College
Email: sarahmychal@gmail.com
David Paulsen, PhD, 2012
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Laboratory of Neurocognitive Development at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Email: david.paulsen@duke.edu
Melissa Libertus, PhD, 2010
Assistant Professor, University of Rochester
Melissa’s Website
Jessica Cantlon, PhD, 2007
Assistant Professor, University of Rochester
Email: jcantlon@rcbi.rochester.edu
Kerry Jordan, PhD, 2007
Assistant Professor, Utah State University
Email: kerry.jordan@usu.edu
Former Postdocs
Joonkoo Park, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate in Brannon Lab 2010-2014
Assistant Professor, UMass Amherst
Email: joonkoo@umass.edu
Michal Pinhas, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate in Brannon Lab 2011-2013
Assistant Professor, Ariel University, Isreal
Email: michalpinhas@gmail.com
Dustin Merritt, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate in Brannon Lab 2006-2011
Human Factor Engineering Specialist II, Sprint
Sara Cordes, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate in Brannon Lab 2005-2009
Associate Professor, Boston College
Email: sara.cordes@bc.edu
Sara’s Website
Jamie Roitman, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate in Brannon Lab 2002-2006
Assistant Research Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago
Email: jroitman@uic.edu
Jamie’s Website
John Pearson, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate
Research Assistant Professor, Duke Institute for Brain Sciences
Email: pearson@neuro.duke.edu
Former Research Assistants
Evan MacLean
Postdoctoral Associate with Brian Hare, Duke
Evan’s Website
Umay Suanda
Postdoc in Linda Smith’s Lab, Duke
Emily Hopkins
Postdoc at Upenn with Deena Weisberg
Emily’s Website
Monica Carlson
Email: monica.lynn.carlson@gmail.com
Rachel Roberts
Graduate Student at University of Michigan
Email: rachel.c.roberts@me.com
Vanessa Bermudez
Research Staff at Sanford University Center for Infant Studies
Email: vnb3@stanford.edu
