PEOPLE

Marc G. Berman
Principal Investigator
Marc Berman is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago. He received his B.S.E. in Industrial and Operations Engineering (IOE) from the University of Michigan, his Ph.D. in Psychology and IOE from the University of Michigan, and received post-doctoral training at the University of Toronto’s Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest. Before arriving to Chicago he was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of South Carolina. Understanding the relationship between individual psychological and neural processing and environmental factors lies at the heart of his research. His lab utilizes brain imaging, behavioral experimentation, computational neuroscience and statistical models to quantify the person, the environment, and their interactions.
To view a list of Marc’s publications, please visit his Google Scholar page.
Post-Doctoral Fellows

Riley Tucker
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Riley Tucker is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation and the Data Science Institute at the University of Chicago. His work seeks to advance and develop scientific theories about cities and neighborhoods using computational methods to merge traditional data sources with geospatially informed online data sets such as Twitter, Yelp, and Foursquare. Read more

Amanda Seccia
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Amanda received her B.A. in Psychology from Wilkes University in 2015 and her Ph.D. in the Department of Learning and Instruction at the University at Buffalo (UB) in 2021. Amanda managed the Pedagogy and Practice Lab at UB where she oversaw use of neuroimaging and psychophysiological measurement tools like functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and electroencephalography (EEG)… Read more
Doctoral Students

Gaby Akcelik
Ph.D. Student
Gaby is a doctoral student in the Integrative Neuroscience Program at the University of Chicago. She received her B.S. in Psychology and completed minors in neuroscience and music technology… Read more

Catherine Stevenson
Ph.D. Student
Catherine is a fourth year in the integrative-neuroscience program. She graduated from Princeton with a background and interest in exploring social and moral cognition at the intersection of various disciplines, including law and other societal institutions… Read more

Nakwon Rim
Ph.D. Student
Nak Won is an incoming graduate student in the Integrative Neuroscience program. He received his bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Brain Cognitive Science from Korea University in 2019 and his master’s degree in Computation… Read more
Staff

Elizabeth Gaillard
Lab Manager & Research Assistant

Elizabeth Janey
Research Assistant
Elizabeth received her B.S. in Psychology from the University of Iowa in 2021 where she researched the twitching movements that occur during REM sleep in mice and rats at developmental ages. Her current research interests focus on how different environments affect cognition… Read more

Alfred Chao
Research Assistant
Alfred holds a B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Philosophy from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and is currently an MA student in the Computational Social Science program at the University of Chicago. His research interests include brain-based prediction of cognitive processes’ outcomes and exploring deep learning applications in neuroscience research.

Kristine Hocker
Research Assistant
Kristine received her B.S. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences with a concentration in Philosophy at MIT. While at MIT, she researched infant social cognition using fNIRS and programmed a study on the platform Children Helping Science. Kristine is interested in using neuroimaging to investigate how different environmental factors… Read more
Masters Students

Loizos Bitsikokos
Masters Research Assistant
Loizos is a graduate student in the MACSS program concentrating on sociology. He holds an Integrated Master’s in applied mathematics and physics and an MSc in mathematical modelling by the National Technical University of Athens (N.T.U.A.). His research interests are interdisciplinary and include computational, mathematical and network sociology. His work at the Environmental Neuroscience Lab will focus on contagion of emotional sentiment in urban environments.

Chirag Mahapatra
Graduate Research Assistant
Chirag is interested in uncovering insights from large scale data with applications in Social Science and Trust and Safety. He also has broader interests in innovation and entrepreneurship. He is pursuing grad studies at University of Chicago and holds a Master of Engineering from UC Berkeley and Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from NITK.
Undergraduate Research Assistants

Bobby Buyalos
Undergrad Research Assistant
Bobby is a rising second-year undergraduate at UChicago majoring in Mathematics and Economics. He is driven by a passion for the social sciences and is interested in using quantitative methods to answer important political, economic, and social questions. Outside of school, Bobby loves playing the saxophone, reading, and crocheting.

John Crossin
Undergraduate Research Assistant
John is an undergrad at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, studying Plant Biotechnology. His volunteerism in environmental restoration and passion for plants and nature intersects with his interest in medicine and human health. His research interests dive into how environmental inequities contribute to population health disparities in urban communities. By using tree-based bioindicators, we could measure pollution impacts within communities. Apart from his research interests, he plays hockey at the University of Illinois and loves the outdoors!

Quinn Liu
Undergraduate Research Assistant
External Collaborators
Lab Alumni
Anabella Pinton
Harrison Arthur (Hank) Grier
Mike Sepke