2012-2013 Officers

President

Whitney Cade

wlcade @ memphis [dot] edu

Whitney Cade is a graduate student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Memphis. Working primarily in the Institute for Intelligent System, her primary interests include cognitive science and learning. Her specific interests include expert human tutoring, pedagogical strategies, intelligent tutoring systems, pedagogical agents, and the application of machine learning in educational software.

Vice President

Blair Lehman

blair.lehman @ gmail [dot] com

Blair Lehman is a psychology doctoral student at the University of Memphis. She is advised by Art Graesser and Andrew Olney. Her main research interests are general areas of cognitive psychology, emotion, education, cognitive science, and intelligent tutoring systems. More specific interests include tutoring (human and computer), emotions during learning, affective computing, instructional methods, state standards and assessment, complex learning, and models of effective teaching.

Secretary

Jackie Maass

jkmaass @ memphis [dot] edu

Jaclyn Maass is a second year doctoral student with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from the University of Tampa. She works now as a research assistant under Dr. Philip I. Pavlik Jr. in the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis. Her research interests include knowledge acquisition, intelligent tutoring systems, metacognition, and cognitive psychology.

Treasurer

Sterling Hutchison

schtchns @ memphis [dot] edu

Sterling Hutchinson graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelor's in Cognitive Science in March 2010. She is currently pursuing a MS/PhD in experimental cognitive psychology under the direction and mentorship of Dr. Max Louwerse at the University of Memphis.

Her research interests are interdisciplinary and include topics such as psycholinguistics, semantic representation, cognitive neuroscience, embodied/symbolic cognition, and discourse processes. Sterling is currently developing experiments concerning semantic representation using behavioral and EEG methodologies.

Research Coordinator

Amber Strain

strain.amber @ gmail [dot] com

Amber Strain's primary research interests are in the areas of emotion in learning, self regulated learning, the effect of emotion on cognitive and metacognitive processes, and regulation of academic emotions. More specifically, she am interested in uncovering what kinds of emotion regulation strategies might be effective for regulating boredom, frustration, or confusion, and how these strategies might be taught to students.

Social Coordinator

Beau Franklin

beaux143 @ gmail [dot] com

Beau Franklin is beginning her third year of PhD work in Communication Sciences and Disorders. Beau's area of focus is early infant vocalization and her collateral area is cognitive science. She works with Kim Oller, Eugene Buder and Linda Jarmulowicz.

Recruitment Officer

Rick Tillman

rntllman @ memphis [dot] edu

Rick Tillman is a 4th year Cognitive Psychology PhD student in the Department of Psychology and The Institute for Intelligent Systems. Working in the MADLab with Dr. Max Louwerse, his primary research interests lie in psycholinguistics and cross-cultural phenomena related to different languages and their effects on cognition. Previous and ongoing studies include studying embodiment through statistical linguistic frequencies, conceptual categorization of plural nouns, corpus-based linguistics, and how native language affects social judgment.

Webmaster

Patrick Hays

dphays @ memphis [dot] edu

Patrick Hays is a graduate student at the University of Memphis pursuing his Masters in General Psychology. He has worked with Dr. Andrew Olney on the Guru project for the past three years. Patrick's primary research interests are cognitive psychology, human-computer interaction, usability engineering, and user-centered design. More specifically he is interested in software and web interface design, 3D modeling and animation, and Intelligent Tutoring Systems.

Communication Sciences and Disorders Ambassador

Yuna Jhang

yjhang @ memphis [dot] edu

Yuna Jhang a PhD student in Communication Sciences and Disorders at The University of Memphis. She is currently under the mentorship of Dr. Kim Oller and working at The Infant Vocalization Lab. She is interested in comparing and contrasting infant’s phonological development cross-linguistically, with a pursuit of language universality and the emergence of human communicative system.

Philosophy Ambassador

Benjamin Aguda

baguda @ memphis [dot] edu

Benjamin is a PhD student from the philosophy department at the University of Memphis. His research interests are in philosophy of mind and philosophy of science. His specific interests are in the philosophy of neuroscience, the phenomenology of affective experience, and enactive cognition. He studies under the mentorship of Shaun Gallagher.

Undergraduate Ambassador

Jamal Williams

jawllm10 @ memphis [dot] edu

Jamal Williams is a first-year graduate student in general psychology at the University of Memphis. His interests are cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, machine learning, and semantic representation. His current goal involves representing low and high level cognitive and perceptual processes, shaped by millions of years of evolution, through computer simulations (i.e. neural networks).

English Ambassador

Shinobu Watanabe

w.shinobu @ gmail [dot] com

Shinobu Watanabe is a graduate student at the University of Memphis pursuing her Master's Degree in English. She worked with Dr. Max Louwerse on numerous projects concerning aspects of language, cognition, and comprehension. She also worked with Dr. Philip McCarthy on projects concerning text analysis software (e.g., the Gramulator). Shinobu has variety of study interests in the area of language and cognitive science: specifically, language production, comprehension, speech, text, and linguistics.