UNIVERSITY OF DENVER - Key Persons
Alyssa is a first-year graduate student from Michigan in the ASC area supervised by Dr. Chiew and Dr. Kateri McRae. She received her B.S. in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience from the University of Michigan and spent the year after graduation as lab manager for the MAC and AACT Labs at the University of Denver. She is excited to continue her work in these labs to explore her interests in emotion regulation and how affective and cognitive processes can affect memory. In her free time, Alyssa loves to spend time in the mountains, create jewelry, and roller skate!
Audrey is a third-year undergraduate student at DU. She is majoring in biology and psychology with a concentration in cognitive neuroscience. After college, she plans to pursue a health-related career. In her free time, she loves doing art, biking, and playing the ukulele.
Von is a first-year graduate student in the ASC area supervised by Dr. Peter Sokol-Hessner and Dr. Chiew. Originally from the Philippines, he lived in Southern California for most of his life, where he earned his Associate degree in Psychology and Art from Riverside City College (RCC) and his Bachelor degree in Psychology from California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB). Before joining the Sokol-Hessner lab and the MAC lab, Von was a research assistant in the Koshino lab at CSUSB, the STEM en familia program at RCC, and the Virtual Lab at the Center for Decision Research, Chicago Booth. He is interested in interactions between attention, memory, emotion, motivation, reasoning, cognitive control, and decision-making in both neurotypical and neurodivergent populations. Outside the lab, Von enjoys music, manga, anime, k-dramas, hikes, and drawing.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Principal Investigator
Dr. Chiew is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Denver. She completed a Bachelor's degree in Neuroscience at the University of Toronto, a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis and a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. She is a member of DU Psychology's Affect-Social-Cognitive area and affiliated with the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience program.
Dr. Chiew is interested in how motivation and affect - what we want and how we feel - shape the way we allocate attention, control task performance, and learn new information; ultimately, supporting adaptive behavior.
Job Titles:
- Postbaccalaureate Research Assistant
Kyle is from St. Louis, Missouri and is a recent graduate of the University of Denver with a degree in Psychology. Kyle plans to pursue medical school with a focus on the brain and behavior. His research interests include motivation and brain health. Outside of academics, Kyle enjoys hiking, trail running and going to the gym.
Maddie is a fourth-year undergraduate student originally from Boston, Massachusetts. She is completing an honors thesis in the MAC Lab. Maddie is majoring in Biology and Psychology with a concentration in Cognitive Neuroscience and a minor in Chemistry, and after college she plans to pursue medical school with a focus on neuroscience. She is interested in how neurochemical brain functions impact our emotions and behavior. In her free time Maddie likes to read, hike and scuba dive.
Rachel is a first-year graduate student in the ASC area. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with degrees in Cognitive Neuroscience and Anthropology, and then spent two years working as a research technician there on the Dual Mechanisms of Cognitive Control project, led by Dr. Todd Braver. Rachel is interested in the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying how cognitive control is adapted in response to different types of motivational and emotional contexts. She is also interested in how lab-based measures of cognitive control translate to executive functioning skills in daily life. Outside of the lab, Rachel enjoys reading, hiking, dancing, thrift shopping, and spoiling her cat, Chamomile.