News

Dr. John Nadra will be joining the laboratory of Professor Taosheng Liu at Michigan State University in 2026. There he will continue his work on mechanisms of attention using multimodal imaging methods. Congratulations John!

Dr. Nora Beier joined the laboratory of Professor Laura Gwilliams at Stanford University in fall 2025. There she will continue her work on the mechanisms of language comprehension, focussing on auditory speech comprehension by combining insights from neuroscience, machine learning and linguistics, and work with neural measurements at different spatial scales, including magnetoencephalography (MEG), electrocorticography (ECoG) and single-unit recordings. Congratulations Nora!

Jin Seo joined the Mangun and Geng labs in fall 2025 as a doctoral student. Jin is from Korea, and earned his bachelor's degree in psychology in Paris at Paris Cité University. He then completed his master's degree in cognitive science working with Dr. Jennifer Coull; his thesis title was "Empirical EMG evidence for time-dependent and time independent sources of variance during motor timing". Prior to joining the doctoral program, Jin was a visiting masters student for one year in the Center for Mind and Brain. Welcome Jin!

Ron Mangun was named a Fulbright US Distinguished Scholar for 2025 by the US-UK Fulbright Commission. He spent six months in 2025 at the University of Birmingham, UK, as a “Fulbright Distinguished Chair” in the Centre for Human Brain Health (CHBH) where he was conducting research related to his work on attention and intention that is supported by the National Science Foundation. At the CHBH he conducted a study using MEG that extended prior work using EEG and fMRI.

Dr. Soukhin Das earned his PhD in Psychology in Spring 2025. His thesis is titled: "The Neural Correlates of Cross-Modal Perception"

Dr. Ron Mangun received the 2024 Award for Education in Neuroscience from the Society for Neuroscience (SfN). Society President, Dr. Marina Picciotto, described his accomplishments and presented the award in a ceremony at the annual meeting in Chicago. More than 22,000 neuroscientists from around the world attended the conference.

Dr. John Nadra received his Ph.D. in Psychology. His dissertation is titled: "The Electrophysiological Correlates of Willed Attention". Dr. Nadra presented his dissertation seminar in front of an enthusiastic audience on October 18, 2024. Congratulations Dr. Nadra!

Dr. Sreeni Meyyappan, a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Mind and Brain, was appointed an Assistant Project Scientist attached to the Mangun lab in 2023. This Academic Federation title recognizes his leadership contributions to scientific progress in the center. Sreeni earned his PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida where he worked with Professor Mingzhou Ding. Prior to that he earned his bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering in India, his native land. Congratulations Sreeni!

Dr. Nora Beier received a prestigious NIH/NICHD Postdoctoral Fellowship (F32) to investigate the neural correlates of attention during speech comprehension. She is interested in whether attention is pre-allocated to particular words in time through rhythmic and non-rhythmic temporal predictions. Her work will use EEG, ERPs and behavioral measures. She works with mentors Dr. Mangun and Dr. Swaab.

John Nadra a fourth-year doctoral candidate, was awarded a National Eye Institute Traineeship for 2022-2023. He will gain additional training as part of the UC Davis Vision Science Training Program (T32). His research is focused on elucidating neural mechanisms of willed attention and visual perception. Congratulations John!