Maya Taliaferro is a K. Lisa Yang post-baccalaureate research scholar working concurrently in the ECCL and the language labs at MIT with Dr. Evelina Fedorenko and Dr. Ted Gibson. In 2021 Maya received her BA in Neuroscience from Hamilton College with a minor in Japanese. Her passion for learning the Japanese language is what ultimately inspired her to study language in the mind and brain generally. Her primary interests lie in understanding how multilingual speakers reason about language pragmatically – that is, the ability to understand non-literal aspects of language – and how this ultimately informs differences in communication between one’s native and non-native languages.

Jessica Chomik graduated from the Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University with a Bachelors in Biological and Physical Sciences and a concentration in Cognitive Neuroscience. From 2018 until 2020, Jessica worked in Alex Keene’s Drosophila lab where she examined the effects of toxic beta-amyloid expression on fly sleep. During her time there, she hosted and co-produced a science podcast, “The Research Diaries,” about her undergraduate research experience. Jessica has also worked in a clinical setting at a neuropsychological testing center where she administered cognitive assessments to at-risk patients in the geriatric population to screen for Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia. Today, Jessica is analyzing causal behavior using fMRI in a joint-lab project under Dr. Laura Schulz and Dr. Nancy Kanwisher as a post-bacc researcher.

Lia Washington is a post-baccalaureate research scholar. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from New York University with minors in Computer Science and Korean language. At New York University she was a research assistant in another experimental developmental lab. Her primary interests lie in multilingualism and language acquisition, specifically, how learned languages and learning languages can affect how individuals understand and navigate the world.

Karla Perez is a post-baccalaureate research scholar. She earned her B.A. in Philosophy and Data Science from Lake Forest College, IL. At Lake Forest, she worked in an experimental philosophy lab on causal reasoning. Currently, her research interests are broad; she is interested in causal reasoning, how people acquire concepts and (use them to) form ideas, and developing cognitive models. At the intersection of philosophy and science, she is interested in the community and puzzle-building/solving aspect of science (à la Khun) and how cognitive scientists develop theories and characterize their findings.