Welcome to the official Department of Psychology newsletter!
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Gabrielle Riemann successfully defends dissertationHer advisor, Toni Kaczkurkin has this to say: "Gabby has been amazing to work with - I feel so grateful to have such wonderful trainees and I know she will go on to do amazing things." Starting this summer, Gabrielle will complete her pre-doctoral internship at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. In addition to engaging in clinical rotations in OCD as well as women's health, Gabrielle will also work with a research lab using machine learning to study predictors of suicidality.
Gabby has also won Vanderbilt's internal competition for the Schmidt Science Fellows. Vanderbilt is nominating her to submit to the broader postdoctoral competition due in July. Congrats Gabby!
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Earning their PhD in 2024/25 academic year
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Brock Michael Carlson
Binocular Population Responses in the Early Visual System
Mentor: Maier/ Woodman
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Jason Kah-Jun Chow
Modeling Individual Differences in High-Level Visual Cognition Using DNNs
Mentor: Palmeri/ Gauthier
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Loic Daumail
Understanding the Visual Phantom Illusion Across the Visual and Motion Processing Systems
Mentor: Tong
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Huiyuan Miao
Understanding the Orientation tuning of Surround Suppression in the Human Visual System
Mentor: Tong
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Blake Austin Mitchell
The Neuronal Basis of V1 Binocular Normalization
Mentor: Maier
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Jisoo Sun
The Role of Attention Control in Ensemble Perception in the Presence of Selection
Mentor: Gauthier
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Undergraduate Award WinnersPax Poggi
Jum Nunnally Undergraduate Honors Research Award
Griffin Murch
Undergraduate Overall Excellence Award
Lola Daley
Undergraduate Academic Achievement Award
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Sophy Xiong Congratulations to Sophy Xiong, a graduate student in André Bastos' lab, for being a co-winner of the Vivien Casagrande Neuroscience Travel Award, on the basis of her research on neuronal oscillatory mechanisms underlying attention and awareness. Read More...
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Andrew McAvan
Andrew accepted his nomination into Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society. Congrats Andrew!
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Graduating Senior Spotlight:
Edie Sackville West
Edie is headed to the London School of Economics! She graduated with double majors in Psychology & Cognitive Studies, with a minor in Medicine Health and Society. She is from Sevenoaks (30 mins from London) and her favorite Vandy psych memories were taking Positive Psychology & Political Psychology.
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Graduating Senior Spotlight:
Griffin MurchGriffin graduated magna cum laude, with a double major in psychology and cognitive studies with a minor in data science. One of his favorite memories in Vanderbilt psych was this past semester in Dr. Maxcey’s political psychology class, hearing our NextSteps student, Malik, make sure everyone in the class received compliments (and clever quips)! "Moments like those---and the class' response to them---remind me just how supportive the Vanderbilt community is.” Griffin won our 2025 Undergraduate Overall Excellence Award in Psychology. He is headed to a full-time research role at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical.
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Miles Abney "Following graduation, I had the opportunity to travel and enroll in studio art courses in Florence, Italy while I applied to graduate school. In January, I returned to St. Andrew's Delaware, the boarding school where I attended high school, to work in admissions and communications as well as serve as our assistant women's crew coach. During my time at Vanderbilt, I was involved in the Honors in Psychological Sciences program, which was truly life changing. The program fostered a lot of self discovery for me and was incredibly supportive as I navigated understanding my career aspirations and interests. It also helped give me confidence in my abilities in a variety of capacities and clarified my desire to apply to Phd programs in Clinical Psychology. I recently committed to a Clinical Psychology PhD program at the University of Alabama where I will be working under the mentorship of Dr. Theodore Tomeny, whose research aims to better understand the needs of families of children and adults with special needs and the professionals who serve them. As a sibling of an individual with special needs, I am thrilled to embark on work that feels so purposeful and impactful. Long term, I hope to serve individuals with special needs, their siblings, families, and other individuals within their support systems."
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Lauren Radomski Lauren is graduating from New York University's Master's in Counseling for Mental Health and Wellness. For her next steps, she will be starting as a therapist at a community mental health clinic in Brooklyn, NY, helping children and families navigate challenges such as anxiety, depression, and trauma.
Her favorite Vandy Psych memory: "Would have to be my oral thesis defense—the culmination of two years of dedicated work on my honors research project. I loved being able to have my mother and grandmother in attendance. I was honored to be awarded the highest honors, and I very much enjoyed celebrating with Dr. Maxcey afterwards."
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Wallace LabSarah Vassall (PhD Candidate, Neuroscience Grad Program): defended her PhD thesis.
Hari Srinivasan (PhD Candidate, NGP): co-wrote foreword for Autism for Dummies book (Wiley). Book release May 6th. See the article here.
William Quakenbush (PhD Candidate, NGP): Received a favorable score on his NRSA.
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Jordan Gunn
Congratulations to Jordan Gunn for an in-press paper at the American Journal of Psychology, Bridging CRU and CMR in free and serial recall: A factorial comparison of retrieved-context models. This article will appear as part of a special Festschrift issue honoring Gordon Logan’s career-long contributions to Psychology, so double congratulations to Gordon and Jordan!
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Gauthier Lab Isabel Gauthier heads the Object Perception Laboratory (OPLab) in the Vanderbilt Psychology Department. She began her career using behavioral and cognitive neuroscience approaches to test the perceptual expertise account of face-recognition specialization, demonstrating how training with novel “greeble” objects can recruit the same neural machinery as faces, and result in several of the same behavioral signatures. In 2001, she launched the Perceptual Expertise Network (first supported by the James S. McDonnell Foundation, and later by NSF)—to foster collaboration across several labs using different methods to study how experience shapes object processing. Read More...
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Devin BurnsDevin will be joining the Department of Psychology as a Senior Lecturer in Spring 2026. Devin received his PhD from Indiana University in Cognitive Psychology after receiving his bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Bradley University. He is coming from Missouri University of Science and Technology where he has studied perceptual processing, rational thinking, and issues around replication. He grew up in Albuquerque, NM and loves all things outdoors, especially rock climbing, kayaking, and playing soccer. He is excited to have the opportunity to teach the high-calibre students at Vanderbilt and to explore Music City with his wife and teenage daughters.
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ICHR Conference June 24th-26th, 2025
Details below:
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Congratulations Graduates!
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