Jeff Zacks, Ph.D.
Chair, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences; Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences Professor of Radiology
- Phone: (314) 935-8454
- Email: jzacks@wustl.edu





Recent Previous Courses
- Advanced Cognitive Psychology: Psychology 5087 (with Ian Dobbins, 2015)
- Cognitive Psychology: Psychology 360
- The Cognitive Neuroscience of Film: Psychology 488/PNP 4488


Cindy Bu
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Cindy Bu is a member of the class of 2025 with a major in Communication Design, a second major in Psychology, and a minor in Marketing. She is interested in studying cognitive processes of people and examine how they perceive and interact with the outside world on a daily basis. Cindy enjoys arts and Kendo (martial art of Japanese fencing) in her spare time.

Nick Cloney
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Nick Cloney is a member of the class of 2024 with a major in Psychology and a minor in Applied Linguistics. He is interested in studying the ways that event segmentation strategies impact recollection of material at a later time. In his free time, he enjoys reading, watching sports, and procrastinating heavily.

Yining Ding, B.S.
Graduate Student
- Email: d.yining@wustl.edu
B.S. Cognitive Studies, Vanderbilt University (2022)
Yining is a first-year Ph.D student in the lab. She is interested in how people perceive fleeting moments in their lives and represent them in the brain, as well as how these processes change with age and experience. In her free time, Yining enjoys singing, reading, watching musicals, creating new recipes, and learning German and Japanese for fun.

Rachel Membreno
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Rachel Membreno is a member of the class of 2024 with a major in Psychology. She is interested in understanding the relationship between memory and aging. In her free, she enjoys learning how to play the piano and cooking.

Meredith Moore
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Meredith is a member of the class of 2023. Her major is Psychology-Neuroscience-Philosophy on the Cognitive Neuroscience track and she is minoring in Religious Studies and Global Health. Meredith is interested in how the brain segments events and what factors affect event segmentation. Her hobbies include reading, sailing, and trying to learn how to cook.

Sarah Morse, M.S.
Lab Manager
- Phone: (314) 935-0212
- Email: morse@wustl.edu
M.S. Biology, University of Alabama at Birmingham (2012)
B.S. Molecular Biology, University of Alabama at Birmingham (2011)
Sarah is the lab manager for the Dynamic Cognition Lab. She is broadly interested in how memory declines with age. Sarah also manages the Complex Memory Lab. When not in one of her two labs, she can be found baking, cycling, hiking, catering to the whims of her two dogs, or trying her best not to kill her plants.

Tan Nguyen, B.S.
Graduate Student
- Email: n.tan@wustl.edu
B.S. Computer Science, University of Science (2019)
Tan is a first-year graduate student. He is interested in combining computational, behavioral, and neural perspectives as a basis for analyzing and understanding event perception and memory. When he’s not in the lab, he likes to read and play sports.

Vi Nguyen
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Vi is a member of the class of 2025 with intended majors in Cognitive Neuroscience and Computer Science. She is interested in exploring the underlying neural mechanisms of cognition and modeling these mechanisms computationally. Music is what keeps Vi moving through work and study, but during her free time, she likes motorbiking, experiencing new food, and talking away with her friends.

Maverick Smith, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Scholar
- Email: mavericks@wustl.edu
Ph.D. Cognitive/Human Factors, Kansas State University (2021)
M.S. Experimental Psychology, Kansas State University (2019)
B.S. Psychology, Mississippi State University (2015)
Maverick is a postdoctoral scholar in the lab. He is interested in studying how we make sense of the world, how our understanding of the world influences what we attend to, perceive, and later remember, and how these processes change across the lifespan. Maverick enjoys watching documentaries, learning Python and R, fishing, drinking coffee, and eating good food.

Ashwin Srinivasan
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Ashwin is a member of the class of 2024 with a double major in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Philosophy and History and a minor in Legal Studies. He is interested in the relationship between event segmentation and memory, specifically how memory is related to position within events. When not in the lab, he enjoys reading, listening to music, and thrifting.

Zachary Stern
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Zachary is a member of the class of 2023. His major is Psychological & Brain Sciences and he is minoring in Computer Science and Writing. Zach is interested in how the brain creates event models, particularly in the context of film perception. In his free time, Zach enjoys watching TV and film, exploring the St. Louis food scene, and cheering on his beloved Baltimore sports teams.

Sophie Su, B.A.
Graduate Student
- Email: s.sophie@wustl.edu
B.A. Economics and Psychology, Cornell University (2019)
Sophie is interested in using a combination of computational modeling, neuroimaging, and behavior experiments to better understand how people extract useful information in this noisy, ambiguous, and dynamic world.
In her free time, she like reading, watching more YouTube than she would like to admit, and engaging in online debates.

Lucy Tindel, B.A.
Research Assistant
- Email: lucyt@wustl.edu
B.A. Psychology, University of Chicago (2023)
Lucy is a research technician in the lab, where she investigates event segmentation and memory, with a focus on the integration of behavioral and neural data using fMRI techniques. Her research interests lie in how the interplay between memory and event representations shape our unique conscious experiences. When she is not doing research, Lucy can be found taking long walks or tending to her pet fish.

Cameron Tsai
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Cameron is a member of the class of 2025 with an intended major in Biology. He is interested in the underlying mechanisms of human cognition and memory as well as event segmentation interventions. He plans to apply to medical school after graduation. In his free time, Cameron enjoys basketball, tennis, cooking, and spending time with family.

Adi Upadhyayula, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Scholar
- Email: shanmukha@wustl.edu
Postdoctoral Scholar, University of California, Davis (2021-2023)
Ph.D. Cognitive Psychology, Johns Hopkins University (2021)
M.A. Cognitive Psychology, Johns Hopkins University (2018)
M.S. Electrical & Computer Engineering, North Carolina State University (2016)
M.S. Physics, BITS-Pilani, India (2013)
B.E. Electronics & Communications Engineering, BITS-Pilani, India (2013)
Bio coming soon.

Jeff Zacks, Ph.D.
Chair, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences; Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences Professor of Radiology
- Phone: (314) 935-8454
- Email: jzacks@wustl.edu
Chair, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Professor of Radiology
Email: jzacks@wustl.edu
Phone: 314-935-8454
Office: Psychology Building 206
Mailbox: CB 1125
Professor Zacks’ laboratory studies how the representations in the brain and the world work together in cognition. He studies perception and cognition using behavioral experiments, functional MRI, computational modeling, and testing of neurological patients. One line of research examines how people parse the continuous stream of behavior into meaningful events, and how this affects memory and cognition. Another line examines how mental imagery contributes to reasoning about spatial relations, especially how mental representations of one’s body are updated during imagery and reasoning.
Recent Previous Courses
- Advanced Cognitive Psychology: Psychology 5087 (with Ian Dobbins, 2015)
- Cognitive Psychology: Psychology 360
- The Cognitive Neuroscience of Film: Psychology 488/PNP 4488