Heather Bortfeld is Professor of Psychological Sciences and Cognitive and Information Sciences and the Emmett, Bernice, and Carlston Cunningham Endowed Chair in Cognitive Development at the University of California, Merced. She received her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, followed by postdoctoral training in Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences at Brown University supported by an NRSA fellowship from the NICHD. Prior to joining UC Merced in 2015, she served on the faculty at Texas A&M University and the University of Connecticut. Her research examines language development in both typically developing children and children with diverse auditory experiences. She focuses on the mechanisms supporting speech perception and early word segmentation, and how these processes unfold across different auditory contexts. Methodologically, she combines behavioral approaches with neuroimaging techniques, including functional near-infrared spectroscopy, to characterize the neural foundations of early language development and subsequent language processing.

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Nancy Rodas De León is a PhD candidate in the Psychological Sciences Department at the University of California, Merced. She earned her M.A. in Psychological Sciences and holds a B.S. in Cognitive Science. Broadly, her research examines how lifelong bilingual language experience shapes the neural mechanisms underlying attention, working memory updating, and phonological processing in young adulthood. She is especially interested in how language use patterns, code-switching behaviors, and both objective and subjective measures of language proficiency modulate cognitive processing, as measured by electroencephalography and event-related potentials (EEG/ERPs).

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Achint Sharma earned her MS from the Center for Behavior and Cognitive Sciences (CBCS) at UoA (India). Currently, she is a third-year Ph.D. student in Cognitive and Information Sciences at UC Merced. Her research interests are audiovisual speech processing, multimodal perception, neuroscience of cross-modal interactions, and developmental sensory processing. Her previous research work includes studies on multisensory integration and developmental cognitive disorders.

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Michelle Franco earned her BA in Psychology from the University of California, Merced. She is a second-year Ph.D. Student in Psychology at UC Merced. She is interested in memory processes and bilingualism, particularly how the two intersect to affect encoding and retrieval. Her current research project examines how language and modality of presentation interact to influence recognition memory in heritage Spanish speakers. 

Parisa Mobasheri earned her MS in Electrical Engineering (Telecommunications) with a focus on signal processing from the Science and Research Branch of Azad University in Iran. Currently, she is a first-year Ph.D. student in Developmental Psychology at the University of California, Merced. Her research interests include signal processing, particularly audio and biological signals, and their applications in neuroscience and cognitive science. In her graduate research, she is especially interested in applying advanced signal processing methods to analyze brain and physiological data, using tools such as fNIRS and EEG, to better understand cognitive and developmental processes.

Madison Lacanlale earned her BS in Cognitive Science from the University of California, Merced. Currently, she is a first-year Ph.D. student in Cognitive and Information Sciences at UC Merced. Her research interests are topics in psycholinguistics and cognitive and auditory neuroscience, including bilingualism and speech and language processing in the brain. In her graduate research, she is using EEG to examine bilingual speech-in-noise perception. She is also contributing to research on sleep-disordered breathing using fNIRS.

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Ali Rahimpour Jounghani received his M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Tehran in 2016 and his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of California, Merced, in 2022. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Walnot Inc., an NIH-funded neurotechnology company. His research focuses on developing and validating wearable, cloud-connected fNIRS platform integrated with multimodal biosensors and EMA to enable real-time monitoring, deep phenotyping, and personalized interventions in mental health, with a particular emphasis on ADHD.

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Pradyumna Lanka is an applied scientist at Amazon, where he works on machine translation using large language models. He received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Auburn University and his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Merced in 2022, where his research focused on functional neuroimaging, computational modeling, and machine learning. From 2022 to 2024, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern University, working with biomedical data analysis and deep learning methods. His work broadly spans machine learning, signal and image processing, and quantitative approaches to understanding complex systems.

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Allison Gabouer earned her B.S. in Psychology from Purdue University in 2015 and went on to complete her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at UC Merced in 2021. During her graduate work, she studied social learning and cognition with a focus on language acquisition in both typically and atypically developing infants and children. After completing her doctorate, Allison transitioned into user experience research, bringing her background in evidence-based experimental methods to applied research settings. She now works as a UX researcher at Bold Insight, where she uses rigorous, human-centered research to inform and improve products and services that support individuals and communities.

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