I received my B.A. in cognitive science at Vassar College, doctoral training in cognitive psychology at Yale University, and post-doctoral training in cognitive neuroscience at Stanford University. I most recently worked at the University of Toronto for 10 years before moving to Cornell. Born and raised in Staten Island, I was happy to be back in my home state of NY and hope to live up to Cornell's land grant mission!
My research is on the role of emotions in human life. Taking many perspectives, we examine how emotions involve and interact with all aspects of the mind, brain and body. This work is recognized by an American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Contributions Early Career Award and cited as being in the top 1% of scientific impact across the world. More importantly, we aim for social impact. We achieve this through communication, outreach and work with industry.
Communication: Whether it is being featured in Museums (e..g, American Museum of Natural history, Royal Ontario Musem), popular media, (e.g., NY Times, Wall St Journal, NPR) or serving as a scientific delagate at the World Economic Forum and presenting our work to the Dalai Lama, we engage with the public to demonstrate how research has value not just to specialists but to all people.
Outreach: Co-creator of Get to Know Your Brain and BrainSTEM education programs in Syracuse NY, the Community Neuroscience Initiative, and the online platform Interactive Psychology: People in Perspective. These efforts increase the accesibilility and inclusivity of neursocience and psychology, affording increased curiosity in STEM though new ways to understand and interact with one’s brain.
Industry: Passionate about developing accesible techonologies for research to get out into the world for better mental and physical health. This has included roles as Chief Scientific Officer in the area of digital health and co-founder of start ups that that apply AI to mental and physical health. This includes training the next generation of PhDs in psychology and neuroscience to have an entrepreneurial outlook.
E-mail: aka47@cornell.edu
Dr. De Rosa's work can be best described as comparative cognitive neuroscience, which is characterized by two related approaches. One is a cross-species approach, comparing rat models of the neurochemistry of attention and learning to humans, focusing on the neurochemical acetylcholine. The other is an across the lifespan approach, examining the cholinergic hypothesis of age-related changes in cognition.
She uses activity mapping from fMRI data to provide theoretical models that can then be more fully tested in rats combining local field potential recordings with immunotoxic lesions and pharmacology.
She received her B.A. in Biology-Psychology from Vassar College and then worked as a research assistant for a few years at Harvard University School of Medicine and fell in love with research. She was trained in animal neuroscience and received her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University and then received training in human neuroscience as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine. She enjoys bringing both of these approaches together in her lab.
E-mail: edd56@cornell.edu
Dr. Riley received her undergraduate degree from MIT and her PhD from the Boston University School of Medicine. She trained at the Boston VA Healthcare System and Harvard Medical School as a Special Geriatric Fellow before coming to ACLAB as a postdoctoral fellow with a NIA F32 fellowship. She is now a Research Associate. In 2024 she was named a National Institute on Aging Butler Williams Scholar.
Dr. Riley is interested in the structure and function of neuromodulatory nuclei. Dysfunction in these ancient brain regions are directly associated with some of the costliest, most distressing, and least addressable human health problems, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, substance abuse, major depression and schizophrenia. Dr. Riley is interested in the role of these ancient, conserved neuromodulatory systems in health and disease in humans. She uses structural and functional MRI, pupillometry, neurocognitive assessment, genetic analysis, measurement of many clinically relevant variables such as metabolic health, blood pressure, and blood sugar control, sensory testing, and a wide variety of sociodemographic measures to better understand the health of neuromodulatory nuclei across the lifespan. She is also running a clinical trial to test the ability of vagus nerve stimulation to improve function in the locus coeruleus/norepinephrine system across the lifespan. Her studies recruit from both Ithaca and Syracuse and place a high priority on recruiting and retaining representative populations relevant to the study of cognitive aging.
In addition to her interest in neuromodulators, Dr. Riley also deeply values the scientific mindset itself as a contributor to human thriving, viewing the process of investigation as a profoundly hopeful human endeavor that should be shared whenever possible, and scientific literacy as crucial protection against confusion, exploitation and ill health. In order to share the process of investigation, Dr. Riley collaborates directly with communities, bringing participants to Cornell who might otherwise have no contact with research science throughout their lives. She shares all research results directly with participants. See Google Scholar for a complete list of citations:
E-mail: er482@cornell.edu
As a proud Ghanaian, my whole life has always been about hard work, improving myself, and using the experiences that I have acquired to making this world better.
I earned a B.Eng. in Computer Science and Technology, M.Eng., and D.Eng. (Ph.D.) in Information and Communication Engineering from the South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China. I am currently a Postdoctoral Associate at the Department of Psychology, Cornell University where I apply machine learning to understanding the relationship between the brain and bodily physiology and how this can serve to diagnose mental function. My main research interest includes artificial intelligence, neuroscience, perception science, physical and physiological signals, affective computing, knowledge graph, and human-computer interactions.
In 2011 after high school, I founded Perry Fordson Companies Limited. I remain its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
In the same way, in 2022 after my doctoral degree, I established KooTech Trading Company Limited in hopes of keeping my research vision alive. Kootech would provide electronic devices in wearables with advanced technology to customers around the world.
Business Focus: I am currently working on an AI-Based pain biomarker in attempt to accurately and effectively assess and discriminate pain from emotional distress at the heart. We love to call it 'Objective pAIn.' Our focus physiological data is ECG/PPG readings.
Inbal Ravreby studies the nuanced interrelationships between the inside world (the embodied self, physiological and neural signals), the outside world (the environment and within this other entities) and the bridge between the two (our senses). She especially focuses on self-other blurring and the sense of togetherness. Inbal is a social cognitive neuroscientist, doing here her postdoc as a Klarman fellow.
E-mail: ir278@cornell.edu
Hetvi Doshi is a doctoral candidate studying food-related nostalgia in human brains and behaviour. Her research was inspired by the movie ‘Ratatouille’, especially that moment towards the end when the food critic - Anton Ego - takes a bit of Ratatouille and is mentally transported to his childhood. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion, often triggering autobiographical memories (and mental time-travel) upon exposure to sensory stimuli. Food-related nostalgia is especially unique in that experiences with food are multi-sensory and integral to our nutrition and metabolism. Hetvi conducts fMRI and behavioural experiments to investigate the relationship between food-related nostalgia, health and metabolism. Her previous research in the lab has explored the experience of nostalgia, with an emphasis on autobiographical memories. She has also founded the Community Nostalgia Initiative, which organizes exhibitions, murals, and other community events that integrate the arts and sciences to create a shared experience of nostalgia in its audience.
E-mail: hsd37@cornell.edu
Senegal Alfred Mabry is a Ph.D. candidate in the neuroscience area of the Department of Psychology in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. He is working to characterize the heart-brain axis in Parkinson’s disease using magnetic resonance imaging. He aims to understand why people with Parkinson’s may struggle to perceive their internal bodily sensations and how interventions like exercise training reduce Parkinson’s symptoms. He is an alum of the Summer Program for Neuroscience Excellence and Success at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. He a graduate fellow for the Community Neuroscience Initiative at Cornell, training preservice educators to use neuroscience to innovate their classroom curriculum. Senegal is the Graduate Student Advisor of the Cornell University chapter of Parkinson's Pals, an organization partnered with the Davis Phinney Foundation to connect people with PD to undergraduates for social interaction and support.
E-mail: sam469@cornell.edu
Lia is a PhD candidate in the Affect and Cognition Lab and a 2021 NSF Graduate Research Fellow. She graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. honors in Human Development (2019), and also worked as Lab Manager & Research Assistant in the Holmes Lab at Yale University for two years. Lia is interested in using genetics and neuroimaging approaches to study age-related changes in brain function, as well as genetic risk factors for presymptomatic dementia. She also aims to computationally model functional networks of psychiatric disorders in the brain. Outside of the lab, Lia enjoys singing/rapping, producing electronic dance music, and improvising music on the piano/flute.
E-mail: lc748@cornell.edu
Jordan is from the Tuscarora Reservation in Western New York. She earned her B.S. in psychology with a minor in neuroscience from SUNY University at Buffalo in 2022. She then completed a post-baccalaureate research education program (NIH-PREP) at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where she worked in psychiatric neuroimaging. She is currently a second-year PhD student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the lab. She is interested in the relationship between autonomic functioning and brain systems in addiction/reward processing.
E-mail: jmj275@cornell.edu
Xuyang Chen is a master's student with a strong interest in developing precise methods for measuring human emotions and other subjective experiences. His work aims to integrate psychological theories with approaches from dynamical systems and signal processing to design next-generation paradigms for assessing emotional experience. He envisions this measurement process as bidirectional: combining theory-driven, more accurate self-report paradigms with physiological-signal–based emotion decoding algorithms.
E-mail: xc584@cornell.edu
ACLAB