Personnel in Yale's ACT Lab

Samuel D. McDougle
Principal Investigator
Sam is an Assistant Professor in Yale's psychology department, and is a program faculty member for Yale's Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, Cognitive Science Program, and the Wu Tsai Institute. He earned his PhD in psychology and neuroscience from Princeton University, and did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. Sam uses psychophysical, computational, and neurophysiological techniques to investigate human learning and memory, with a particular interest in the interface of cognition and motor behavior. Sam also likes: playing folk music (fiddle, mandolin, & guitar), opaque IPAs, and rainy days.

CV • Scholar • Git • Twitter ⇾ @smickdougle
Skill! ⇾ Old-time/Bluegrass fiddle, mandolin, & guitar

Zekun Sun
Postdoc
Zekun earned her PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Johns Hopkins University, where she studied the perception of complexity - what makes things look informationally dense or sparse. Zekun is broadly interested in exploring how the human mind represents and reconstructs complex information to achieve various goals. Her recent work focuses on the temporal construction of mental representation of scenes and actions. Out of the lab, Zekun enjoys spicy food, hot pot, anime, board games, Chinese crosstalk (Xiangsheng), and playing with her very playful dog Gray Bean.

Scholar
Skill! ⇾ Dog grooming!

Hanna Hillman
Graduate Student
Hanna is interested in taking a multimodal approach to better understand the process of cognitive motor learning and its computational underpinnings. She graduated from the University of Minnesota where she studied psychology, neuroscience, and sociology. As a research assistant in Uri Hasson's lab at Princeton, and then in Sam Gershman's lab at Harvard, Hanna used fMRI and novel computational methods to investigate human learning behavior and individual differences. Outside of the lab, Hanna enjoys dancing Lindy Hop, painting, carpentry, Star Trek, and going on recreational geology adventures.

CV • Scholar • Twitter ⇾ @hannahillman
Skill! ⇾ Unicycling & medical illustration

Sanghoon Kang
Graduate Student
Sanghoon is interested in how actions change memories, and how memories change actions. Specifically, he's interested in how actions exploit the adaptive nature of memories, and how organizational principles of memory and context drive this adaptability. He graduated from Seoul National University, majoring in Psychology and minoring in the Brain-Mind-Behavior combined program. Afterwards, he worked with Woo-Young Ahn at SNU, and then Elizabeth Goldfarb at Yale, investigating how changes in emotional memories relate to substance abuse. In his off-time, he likes to run around town and write short stories. He hopes that, someday, his research will help him to finally learn the keyboard.

CV • Scholar • Git

Apoorva Sharma
Graduate Student
Apoorva completed her bachelor's degree in Life Sciences, followed by a master's degree in Cognitive Science from IIT Gandhinagar in India. She is interested in sensorimotor learning, and how cognitive factors like attention and decision-making contribute to generating effective movement. Her previous work includes studying the mechanisms of motor adaptation. When not delving into brain matter, she watches an unhealthy number of movies, unrestricted by language or era. You can often find her tapping her feet to Dire Straits while attempting to pet every dog that crosses her path.

CV • Twitter ⇾ @Apoorva___18
Skill! ⇾ Painting

Juliana E. Trach
Graduate Student
Juliana is interested in how people learn about structure in the world and how knowledge about structure supports efficient behavior. She's particularly interested in hierarchy in the brain and how neural systems interact to constrain and facilitate structure learning. Juliana obtained her ScB in Cognitive Neuroscience at Brown University in 2018. After Brown, she spent two years working with Casey Lew-Williams and managing the Princeton Baby Lab. Outside of the lab, Juliana can be found listening to political podcasts on walks with her dog, Ruby, exploring EVERY local brewery, and testing the limits of her newly discovered quarantine skill, cooking.

CV

Sophia Ou
Lab Manager
Sophia received her Bachelor's degrees in Math and Psychology from Bryn Mawr College, where she worked with Dr. Anjali Thapar on individual differences in recognition memory retrieval. After undergrad, she worked in Dr. Anna Schapiro's lab at UPenn, using EEG to study category learning and memory consolidation during sleep. At the ACT lab, she hopes to deepen her understanding of learning, memory, and motor adaptation. Outside the lab, she also enjoys crocheting, Rummikub, Blade Runner. and rock climbing.

Skill! ⇾ Diving

Tolu Adanri
Undergraduate Researcher
Tolu is a second-year at Yale in Davenport College, considering majoring in psychology. She is interested in the cognitive processes of learning, particularly how people learn new skills. As a research assistant in the ACT Lab, she is exploring habitual motor behaviors in humans and hierarchical categorizations of tools. Outside of the lab, she enjoys watching reality television, playing board games, and exploring the New Haven food scene.

Skill! ⇾ Board game pro

Tess Levy
Undergraduate Researcher
Tess Levy is a junior in Pierson College studying Cognitive Science. As a research assistant in the ACT Lab, she is exploring hierarchical learning structures and how they differ between motor and non-motor domains. Outside of the lab, she enjoys running, live music, and playing backgammon with friends.

Skill! ⇾ Backgammon

Taylor McClure
Undergraduate Researcher
Taylor McClure is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College studying Cognitive Science. As a research assistant in the ACT Lab, she hopes to draw from her background in ballet to explore applications of motor learning to dance and physical therapy. Outside the lab, Taylor enjoys practicing yoga and pilates, and she dances and choreographs for Yale Dancers and the Yale Undergraduate Ballet Company.

Skill! ⇾ Ballet

Lab Alumni
Naser Al-Fawakhiri ⇾ MD/PhD student at Johns Hopkins
Addison Beer ⇾ Research Assistant at Yale's Wu Tsai Institute
Cameron Berg ⇾ AI researcher at Meta
Tabea Botthof ⇾ Professional hockey player based in Stockholm
Alexander Forrence ⇾ Staff Scientist at Yale's Wu Tsai Institute
Christopher Hewitson ⇾ Research Scholar at Macquarie University
Maya Ingram ⇾ Lab Manager at U Chicago psychology
Michael Irias ⇾ Psychology graduate student at Florida State
Olivia Kim ⇾ Assistant Professor at Bates College
Ophelia Pilkinton ⇾ Medical student at U of Tennessee
Sabrina Santos ⇾ Undergraduate Researcher at University of Puerto Rico
Liang Zhou ⇾ Neuroscience PhD student at UCL

[Your name here...]
The ACT lab is currently recruiting for a postdoc position. We are looking for individuals who are interested in human cognitive psychology and/or cognitive neuroscience, with an emphasis on learning and memory (especailly w/r/t action), and with experience in (or an interest in acquiring experience in) designing and performing behavioral experiments, computational modeling, and/or human neurosecience methods. Note, being primarily experienced with/interested in pursuing one of the above research approaches (behavior, computational modeling, neuroimaging, etc.) is totally fine!

The ACT lab is committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion, and in maintaining a fun, challenging, and supportive research environment for everyone.
If you are interested in joining the lab, please email Sam (see the Contact link at the top of the page for info) to discuss your interests and whether our group would be a good fit.