Planning Committee
Christopher Kanan, General Chair (TDLC)
Contact: ckanan@ucsd.edu; http://chriskanan.com/
Christopher Kanan is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He studies object recognition from a multidisciplinary perspective, fusing findings and methods from computer vision, machine learning, psychology, and computational neuroscience. He is particularly interested in the neural and computational principles that govern saccadic eye movements for face and object processing.
Tiffany Lee, Program Chair (LIFE)
Contact: tlee13@u.washington.edu
Dr. Tiffany Lee is a postdoctoral fellow with the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center at the University of Washington. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Washington in the Learning Sciences and has a background in child development and psychology. Her research interests lie at the intersection of child development, science education, and the learning sciences. Specifically, her work focuses on how preschool and early elementary school aged children learn about science across the everyday settings of their lives. She utilizes a variety of methods, including ethnographic observations, interviews, and design-based implementation research, to explore how young children develop and pursue science-related knowledge and interests.
Katie Van Horne, Program Chair (LIFE)
Contact: katievh@uw.edu
Katie Van Horne is a doctoral student in the Learning Sciences. She studies youth STEM learning and is interested in understanding how to engage all students in contemporary scientific practices while taking into account their everyday and out of school scientific expertise. She has a B.S. in Biology with a minor in pre-genetic counseling from Washington State University and before beginning the program at UW, she worked as the project coordinator on an NSF Math Science Partnership grant at the American Society of Human Genetics.
April Galyardt, Program Chair (PSLC)
Contact: galyardt@stat.cmu.edu
Steve Weisberg, Activities and Networking Chair (SILC)
Contact: smweis@gmail.com
Steven Weisberg is a graduate student at Temple University where he uses behavioral methods to study the spatial representation of slope and its use in navigation tasks. His projects encompass both real and virtual environments, as well as map reading. He is particularly interested in the malleability of the sensory systems involved in processing slope information; how those systems fail; and how they underlie and enable our cognitive representations. As a learning scientist and
psychologist, one of Steven’s primary goals is to promote STEM-relevant skills that rely upon transitioning between representations. One project, built on research on slope representations as a starting point, applies principles of analogical learning to train contour map interpretation.
Matthew Wisniewski, Activities and Networking Chair (TDLC)
Contact: mgw@buffalo.edu, 315-246-7446
Matthew Wisniewski studies auditory learning and memory in the psychology department at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He is interested in the mechanisms that lead to the enhanced perception of differences in sound. He uses behavioral, electrophysiological, and modeling methods in order to investigate 1) what is actually being learned as a person shows better perceptual performance 2) how different types of training impact what is learned, and 3) what training regimes are most effective for auditory learning.
Abigail Noyce, Website Chair (CELEST)
Contact: anoyce@brandeis.edu, http://people.brandeis.edu/~anoyce
Dr. Markus Plank, Workshop Chair (TDLC)
Contact: mplank@ucsd.edu
Markus Plank is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the UCSD Institute for Neural Computation where he applies mobile brain imaging in complex, naturalistic Virtual Reality (VR) to identify brain dynamics of unsupervised spatial learning and memory. Also, he is interested in the neural circuits involved in multimodal sensory integration, spatial representations, as well as neurocognitive models for optimal motor control. His expertise is in traditional and innovative analysis techniques for EEG, MEG, and fMRI data, including blind source estimation technologies (e.g., Independent Component Analysis), equivalent current dipole reconstruction and coherence analysis.
In his position as representative of the TDLC Sensorimotor Network Trainees, he advises on academic/career development and internship opportunities within the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center
Deborah Williams, Workshop Chair (VL2)
Martina Rau, Workshop Chair (PSLC)
Linda Salamanca, Local Planning and Logistics Chair (TDLC)
Contact: salamanca.linda@gmail.com
Linda Salamanca studies social interaction and learning. She recently finished her Master’s in Psychology from San Diego State University where she investigated children’s use of nonverbal behaviors in problem solving contexts. Currently she is researching student-teacher interaction and the role of nonverbal behavior and learning.
Justin Harris, Center Synergy Chair (SILC)
Contact: hjustin@temple.edu
Justin is currently researching the development of early spatial visualization skills in young children. His work has focused on how the development of these skills might be supported by adults and exploring age-appropriate assessment in order to track development.
He is currently developing a mental folding measure for children in their first years of formal schooling. If you're working on novel testing approaches or statistical methods involved in the test development make sure to grab Justin during one of the networking sessions and tell him about your research!
Justin has a BS in Computer Science (with a double major in Psychology) from UMBC and a M.S. in Interactive and Collaborative Technology from UCI.