Lab Members
David J. Madden, Ph.D. is the director of the laboratory. He is Professor of Medical Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Duke University Medical Center. He is also a core faculty member in the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center (BIAC) and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCN). Additional information is available here.
Jenna L. Merenstein, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral research associate, completing her doctoral work with Ilana Bennett at the University of California, Riverside. While at UC Riverside, Jenna conducted work on several topics in the cognitive neuroscience of aging, including the relation of white matter integrity to episodic memory, the relation of brain activation to implicit memory and learning, and neuroplasticity in advanced aging. At Duke, Jenna has worked on age-related differences in brain activation during visual search, high-resolution diffusion-weighted imaging, and depth- and curvature-based quantitative susceptibility mapping analyses of cortical iron in Alzheimer’s disease.
Jenna was awarded a 3-year Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct a project investigating High-Resolution Diffusion Imaging of Brain Connectivity in Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease. She was also awarded a George Maddox Fellowship, from the Duke Aging Center, for 2023. Jenna is a Duke / UNC Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Research Education Component (REC) Scholar, for her work on Column-Based Analyses of Cortical Iron in Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease.
Tina Zhao is a Clinical Research Intern and postbaccalaureate fellow at BIAC. Tina recently completed her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at Wellesley College, with additional coursework and research at MIT.
Amalia Desir is a research assistant and Duke undergraduate, majoring in Neuroscience, with a minor in Public Policy.
Postdoctoral Alumni:
Shivangi Jain, Ph.D. is currently a Research Scientist in Neuroscience at the AdventHealth Research Institute, in Orlando, Florida. She completed her bachelor's degree in Psychology and master's degree in Cognitive Science at the University of Allahabad, India, where she held a Graduate Merit Scholarship. She completed her doctorate in Psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she worked with Paul Verhaeghen on the effects of aging on working memory, attention and emotion.
Ying-hui Chou, Ph.D. completed a postdoctoral year in the lab, and then continued as a Medical Instructor In the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Her interests are in resting-state functional brain connectivity, particularly in relation to adult age and Parkinson's disease. She is currently Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
Emily L. Parks, Ph.D. is currently a Lecturing Fellow in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University. In Emily's postdoctoral work, she used neuroimaging to investigate age-related differences in visual attention. Emily completed her graduate studies with our colleague Prof. Joe Hopfinger at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she conducted research on the relation between memory and attention.
Imke Kirste, Ph.D. completed her Ph.D. in biology at the Free University of Berlin. She was a fellow at the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD), Charite Hospital Berlin, and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (MPI). Imke is currently working in private industry in the management of clinical trials testing neurocognitive performance.
Julia Spaniol, Ph.D. is Professor in the Psychology Department of Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada.
Julia's postdoctoral research was on a reaction time distribution model of memory retrieval.
For this work, Julia was the recipient of the 2005 APA Division 20 Postdoctoral Research Award.
Julia is the recipient of an Early Researcher Award from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation (2014-2019) and has held the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Aging (Tier 2, NSERC) since 2014.
Wythe Whiting, Ph.D. is Professor and Department Head in the Psychology Department of Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia.
Wythe's postdoctoral research investigated top-down attention in visual search and semantic memory retrieval.
Tom Pierce, Ph.D. is Professor in the Psychology Department of Radford University, in Radford VA.
Tom worked on the interactive effects of health and cognitive functioning.
Phil Allen, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology and Interim Director of Research Administration at the University of Akron, Ohio. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the journal Experimental Aging Research.
During his postdoctoral work Phil developed the Parallel Input Serial Analysis (PISA) model of word recognition.
Staff and Student Alumni:
Alexa Putka completed her Neuroscience undergraduate degree at Duke, where she was the recipient of a summer neuroscience program fellowship from the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, and a Donald A. King Summer Research Fellowship. Alexa worked in the lab as a Clinical Research Intern in 2021 and is currently pursuing her graduate studies in Neuroscience at the University of Michigan.
Angela Cook was a research assistant following her undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Dallas with a major in Neuroscience. She completed a master's degree in Data Science at North Carolina State University and is currently a Statistician at NoviSci Inc.
Alex Lee completed his Duke undergraduate studies as a Biology major, including a thesis on the topic of functional and structural architecture of the aging brain, for the Department of Biology Graduation with Distinction Program. Alex was awarded a scholarship to attend the Ohio State University College of Medicine, and he is currently continuing his studies there.
Zach Monge completed his Ph.D. in the Duke Cognitive Neuroscience Admitting Program. Zach recently published a review article on the relation between cognitive and visual perceptual decline in healthy aging. A recent article uses graph theory to describe age-related differences in the brain networks underlying visual attention. He has also completed a project on the relation between cerebral white matter integrity and cognition in older adults.
Fei Tan completed her master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at Duke and is currently in the graduate program in Biomedical Engineering at UC Berkeley-UC San Francisco.
Miranda McMickens recently completed her bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana. For her senior capstone project, Miranda investigated the brain-heart association from analysis of EEG and EKG recordings in epileptic patients prior to seizure onsets. Miranda received the Cengiz Topakoglu Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Biomedical Engineering. She was a research assistant in the summer of 2018 and is now attending the graduate program in Biomedical Engineering at Duke.
Maria Sison completed her Duke undergraduate degree in Neuroscience and is currently a medical student at the Duke University School of Medicine.
Rachel Siciliano was a research assistant following her graduation with high honors in neuroscience, from Colgate University, Hamilton, NY. Rachel was also captain of the women’s lacrosse team and received the Gottesman Award for Excellence in the Sciences and Athletics. She has recently completed a project on brain activation during the processing of emotional stimuli. She is currently a graduate student in the Clinical Science program of the Department of Psychology of Vanderbilt University.
Lauren Packard was a research assistant following her graduation from Elon College, in Elon, NC, where she designed an individual major in neuroscience, motor control, and public health. At Elon she was the recipient of a Presidential Scholarship, and was named a Glen Raven scholar in her senior year. Lauren recently completed the Physician's Assistant program at UNC Chapel Hill, and is in private practice.
Catherine Tallman was a research assistant following her undergraduate degree at Virginia Tech and is now a graduate student in psychology at UC San Diego.
Sally Cocjin was a research assistant following her undergraduate degree at DePaul University. She completed the graduate program in Occupational Therapy at Tufts University and is currently an occupational therapist at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab In Chicago.
Maria Boylan was a research assistant following her undergraduate degree at Virginia Tech and completed her Ph.D. in the Cognition and Neuroscience program at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is working currently a Senior Medical Science Liaison at Alector, Inc.
David Hoagey was a research assistant after completing his undergraduate degree at Penn State and recently completed his PhD. in the Cognition and Neuroscience program at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University in St. Louis.
Max Horowitz was an undergraduate assistant while completing his undergraduate degree at Duke. He completed a master's degree in medical physiology at Case Western Reserve University and a D. O. degree at the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in Harlem, New York.
Jesse Honig was an undergraduate research assistant in the lab for three years and completed the Graduation with Distinction program at Duke, with a neuroscience major. He conducted a research project on age-related differences in cerebral white matter integrity, based on his analyses of white matter lesion and DTI data. He is currently attending medical school.
Ragini Singh was a Clinical Research Intern in the lab for a year following her baccalaureate in Psychology, with a minor in Mathematics, at Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Ragini is currently working in the private sector.
Hollie Mullin was a Clinical Research Intern for two years following her undergraduate degree at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, Kansas, with a major in behavioral neuroscience. She wrote her senior honors thesis on “Differences in Experiencing the Speech-to-Song Illusion as a Function of Age." Hollie is currently pursuing her doctorate in clinical neuropsychology in the Department of Psychology at Penn State University.
Nicole Stepovich was an undergraduate research assistant, majoring in Neuroscience, from her sophomore to senior years. She completed a senior project on the effect of bilingualism on functional brain connectivity in aging. Nicole is currently teaching 10th grade Biology and 12th grade AP Environmental Science at the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter Public School, in Boston, MA. She is also volunteering at Boston Children's Hospital.