• Research interests: visual perception and attention, working memory, decision making.
• Email:
• Phone:  517.432.6694
• Links: personal webpage, Google scholar

Xiaoli Zhang

Xiaoli received her B.S. in Psychology from Tsinghua University (China), and her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from The Ohio State University where she worked with Julie Golomb. Before joining MSU, she was a post-doc working with Sarah Shomstein at The George Washington University. Her research interests include visual perception and attention – particularly how they interact to handle dynamic information processing and their underlying neural mechanisms (personal webpage).

Melisa Menceloglu

Melisa received her B.S. in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her Ph.D. in Psychology from Northwestern University where she worked with Satoru Suzuki. Before joining MSU, she completed three years of postdoctoral research at Brown University working with Joo-Hyun Song. Her research focuses on perception, action, and attentional processes in the temporal domain. She uses behavioral and EEG methods to understand how we generate expectations about timing of events, orient attention accordingly, and how these processes shape perception and action. (Google scholar).

Brendan is a Ph.D candidate in Psychology with a specialization in Cognitive Science. He is a Michigan native that graduated from Central Michigan University with a B.S. in Psychology and Neuroscience and a B.A. in French. He is interested in studying the neural correlates of attention and memory and how these cognitive processes contribute to consciousness. In his (limited) free time he enjoys spending time with his family, playing video games, and cooking.

Sydney George graduated from Michigan state University with a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Cognitive Science. Her current work focuses on the interaction between attention and visual working memory, and how multiple mental representations of physical stimuli can be maintained to guide our attention. In the future, she hopes to attend graduate school, and study the effects of aging and neurodegenerative disease on cognitive function, particularly memory. Outside of the lab, she enjoys coaching swim, playing tennis, and cooking.

Grace is pursuing her bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering at Michigan State University, with a concentration in Biomedical Engineering and a minor in Cognitive Science. She is currently working on population receptive field (pRF) modeling and computational neuroimaging, contributing to studies of visual perception and brain function. Her broader research interests span neural engineering, biomedical signal processing, and machine learning approaches to neuroscience. She is particularly passionate about developing advanced, biocompatible neural implants that can restore lost function or deliver targeted therapies for neurological diseases.