News
December 17th, 2024: Congratulations to graduate student Gina Choe for successfully completing her oral examinations on her PhD thesis proposal!
September 25th, 2024: Congratulations to Dr. Adam Kaminski on his successful defense of his doctoral dissertation, “Transdiagnostic Alterations in Functional Connectivity Flexibility Supporting Executive Control in Childhood Psychopathology.”
June 17th, 2024: A big welcome to Hannah Puckett, DCNL’s new Lab Manager! Hannah graduated from Washington and Lee University where she majored in Cognitive and Behavioral Science and minored in Poverty and Human Capability Studies. She will continue the neuroimaging data collection for the lab’s Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC) study. She is also excited to work as a clinical volunteer for Children’s National Hospital on the IDDRC study.
June 13th, 2024: We said goodbye to our beloved lab manager Brylee Hawkins. Brylee will be deeply missed but we are excited for her next adventure in Chapel Hill as she pursues her Masters in Clinical Social Work at UNC.
November 13th, 2023: Graduate student Adam Kaminski presented a talk on, “Unitary Neural Correlates of Executive Control in Pediatric Transdiagnostic Psychopathology,” at the Society for Neuroscience (SFN) conference in Washington, DC.
September 9th, 2023: Graduate student Adam Kaminski presented a flash talk at FLUX 2023 annual conference. He spoke about his project measuring striatal resting-state connectivity changes related to stimulant exposure in kids with ADHD.
July 27th, 2023: Some members of the lab ventured to Montreal, Canada to attend the 2023 Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) conference.
July 20, 2023: The lab welcomed our new post-doc, Yijun, and said farewell to our summer volunteer, Sophia, over a dinner out.
April 21, 2023: Congratulations to Brenna Towell on presenting her amazing undergraduate thesis at Georgetown’s Honors Symposium. Her work titled, “Sleep Health and Psychopathology Moderate Executive Functioning in Pediatric Obesity,” was the culmination of her three years working in the lab. Brenna is graduating in May and will be applying to medical school for the upcoming cycle.
March 29, 2023: High school volunteer, Tyler Lynch, places third in Behavioral and Social Sciences at the Regeneron Westchester Science and Engineering Fair. Tyler presented on his senior project that explored the novel connection between visual perception and mental flexibility through individuals with distinct visual perception styles. Tyler has worked diligently on his research project this past year and his hard work paid off. Great job Tyler!
June 1st, 2022: Welcome to Brylee Hawkins, the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory’s new Lab Manager! Brylee recently graduated from the University of Florida where she majored in Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience and minored in Disabilities in Society. She will be primarily responsible for coordinating neuroimaging data collection for the lab’s Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC) study. She will also work as a clinical volunteer for Children’s National Hospital on the IDDRC study.
April 28th, 2022: Lab members Adam Kaminski (IPN) and Adnan Rashid (LCN) present their posters at the Society of Biological Psychiatry (SOBP) annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana!
April 2nd, 2022: Congratulations to Anna Missner for presenting her amazing undergraduate thesis, “The Effects of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) on Category Learning in College Students”. Anna is graduating this May, and will be attending the doctoral program in clinical psychology (PsyD) at George Washington University.
February 4th, 2021: Congratulations to Dr. Laya Rajan on her fabulous defense of her doctoral dissertation, “Multimodal Evidence for Neurocognitive Alterations in Pediatric Obesity”. Laya had over 100 people present at her virtual defense! In the spring, Laya will return back to medical school to complete her final two years in the combined MD/PhD program at Georgetown.
November 2nd, 2020: Lab members join together masked up for a socially distant lab lunch! We try to keep the lab spirit going in these unpredictable times.
October 27th, 2020: Congratulations to Dr. Kevin Cook on his successful defense of his doctoral dissertation, “Behavioral Flexibility in Autism: The Role of Memory and its Neural Correlates”. Kevin has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at Children’s National Medical Center, where he will explore the fetal and neonatal functional connectome as it relates to development and developmental disorders.
July 2nd, 2020: Welcome to Jordan Linde, the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory's new Laboratory Manager! Jordan recently graduated from Colgate University as a major in psychology and will be primarily responsible for continuing to coordinate neuroimaging data collection for the lab's Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) study, as well as the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC) study.
July 1st, 2020: Today we said our farewells to our lab manager Katie. She is shortly starting an MD program at the University of Michigan! We wish her the best of luck as she begins her new journey.
April 7th, 2020: The Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory had a virtual Happy Hour during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are unable to collect in-person participant data during this time, but we are all working and connecting remotely as best we can! Stay safe!
July 5, 2019: Dr Teresa Arora, Assistant Professor at Zayed University in the UAE visited DCNL for our lab meeting on July 5th! She presented some fascinating research on her main research focus, adolescent sleep! Follow this link to learn more about her research.
June 13, 2019: Congratulations to DCNL alum Charles Lynch PhD for winning the Federation of Association for Brain and Behavior Societies Dissertation research award for 2019! Click this Link to check it out!
June 9-13, 2019: Many members of DCNL traveled to Rome to attend the 2019 Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) conference!
Dec 19-21, 2018: Dr. Vaidya was invited to teach a course on Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at the Center for Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, University of Allahabad, India (http://cbcs.ac.in/announcements/gian-course-developmental-cognitive-neuroscience/) under the Global Initiative of Academic Network (GIAN) program, an initiative of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India.
Nov 19-23, 2018: Dr. Vaidya was invited to visit Ramon Llul University in Barcelona, Spain to present findings of pediatric obesity studies and consult on research projects being conducted by the Faculty of Psychology and Sports Science under the Visiting Scholar Program Aristos Campus Mundus which aims to foster excellence in academics and research
Dr. Vaidya Awarded the President’s Award for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers!
October 23rd, 2018: Dr Vaidya is a recipient of the prestigious “President’s Award for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers”. She and her co-recipient were recognized at the 2018 Fall Faculty Convocation on October 16th. Please congratulate Dr Vaidya if you see her, this is a huge honor! Here is a link to the video, created by the University to honor the research done by these two amazing scholar-teachers!
Frank Fishburn's dissertation published in NeuroImage!
September 20th, 2018: In his dissertation, he discusses a new method for motion correction for fNIRS. See link here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811918308103
Farewell to Brad Cherry and Junaid Merchant!
September 4th, 2018: DCNL said farewell to two lab members last week over dinner at Bucca di Beppo. Junaid has just started a neuroscience PhD program at the University of Maryland. We wish them both the best in all of their future endeavors!
Welcome to our new Laboratory Manager, Katie Flaharty!
August 1, 2018: Welcome to Katie Flaharty, the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory's new Laboratory Manager! Katie recently graduated from Williams College as a double major in psychology and biology and will be primarily responsible for coordinating neuroimaging data collection for the lab's Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) study.
Congratulations to Chuck Lynch on Successfully Defending his Dissertation!
May 25, 2018: Congratulations to Chuck Lynch on the successful defense of his doctoral dissertation, "Precision mapping and transcranial magnetic stimulation of cortical hubs in individuals." Chuck has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at Weill Cornell Medicine, where he will help develop brain-imaging biomarkers for depression, which may help clinicians better diagnose subtypes of depression and identify patients that are most likely to respond to targeted neuromodulation therapies.
Learn more about Chuck's dissertation here.
Congratulations to Alaina Pearce on Successfully Defending her Dissertation!
November 17, 2017: Congratulations to Alaina Pearce, who successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, "Neurocognitive deficits in pediatric obesity." She has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the Pennsylvania State University, where she will be using neuroimaging techniques to examine the neural mechanisms underlying overeating in response to portion size.
Learn more about Alaina's dissertation here.
Congratulations to Frank Fishburn on Successfully Defending his Dissertation!
January 9, 2017: Congratulations to Frank Fishburn on successfully defending his doctoral dissertation, "Establishing the sensitivity of functional near-infrared spectroscopy to cognitive load and state in healthy adults and children with Autism Spectrum Disorder." He has accepted a postdoctoral researcher position at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Learn more about Frank's dissertation here.