People

Nichole Bouffard

Postdoctoral Scholar

BS: University of California, Davis (2015)
MS: University of Toronto (2019)
PhD: University of Toronto (2024)

bouffard@wustl.edu

Nichole received her B.S. in Psychology at the University of California, Davis where she worked with Dr. Arne Ekstrom studying spatial cognition. After graduating, she spent three years working as the lab manager/junior speciailist in Dr. Charan Ranganath’s Dynamic Memory Lab where she studied various aspects of episodic memory and collaborated on projects investigating temporal memory and schemas as well as cognitive maps and decision-making. She began graduate school in 2018 at the University of Toronto under co-supervision from Dr. Morgan Barense and Dr. Morris Moscovitch. She received her M.A. in 2019 and her Ph.D. in 2024. Her graduate work investigated hippocampal gradients of autocorrelation and how they are related to behavior and memory dysfunction. Now as a postdoctoral scholar, she aims to continue using her autocorrelation method to investigate how the brain processes complex, naturalistic events and to investigate how event boundaries structure our memory at retrieval. Outside of work Nichole spends her time doing yoga, playing volleyball, cooking elaborate meals, and exploring new bars and restaurants in St. Louis. She also occasionally convinces Adi to accompany her on random adventures to the car wash and to meet with strangers from Facebook marketplace.

Adi Upadhyayula

Postdoctoral Scholar

BE, MS: BITS Pilani, India (2013)
MS: North Carolina State University (2016)
MA: Johns Hopkins University (2018)
PhD: Johns Hopkins University (2021)
Postdoc: University of California, Davis (2021-2023)

shanmukha@wustl.edu
Personal website

If  you are reading this after Nichole’s bio, this is the said Adi! If not, well, he’s still Adi anyway. Adi is interested in understanding how events are represented in the mind and the brain. During graduate school at Johns Hopkins where he trained as a vision scientist, Adi worked with Dr. Jon Flombaum on how we visually perceive and process time. After his PhD, he spent 2 years working with Dr. John Henderson at University of California, Davis, studying how people process spatiotemporal continuities when viewing naturalistic movies. During this time, he became interested in how we think about event representations. He now works with both Zach and Jeff to study this question. Adi loves to chat about event representations and all things cognition. If you happen to spot him at a conference, feel free to go say hi! Outside of work, Adi spends his time biking, walking, cooking, and thinking about how to buy his next guitar. He recently went to the Pacific Northwest for a short trip and is fully convinced that he now has a new personality and outlook towards life. Whatever makes him happy!

Savannah Born

Graduate Student

BS: Johns Hopkins University (2020)

born@wustl.edu

Savannah Born received her BS in Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University. During her undergraduate career she worked in Dr. Janice Chen’s lab, studying human memory using narratives and naturalistic stimuli. After graduating, she worked as the lab manager for the labs of Dr. Janice Chen and Dr. Chris Honey for three years. Her current research interests involve incorporating personality and social psychology to investigate individual differences in interpretation/memory of complex stimuli. Outside of the lab, Savannah can be found trying to learn cool gymnastics tricks, deeply immersed in a fantasy video game or book series, or walking her cat Milo on a leash.

Angelique Delarazan

Graduate Student

BA: University of California, Davis (2018)
MS: Washington University in St. Louis (2022)

a.delarazan@wustl.edu

Angelique Delarazan received her BA at the University of California, Davis, where she majored in Psychology and minored in Human Development. During her undergraduate career, she worked in Dr. Alison Ledgerwood’s Attitudes, Groups, and Identities Lab, studying framing effects on decision making. Angelique also worked in Dr. Charan Ranganath’s Dynamic Memory Lab, utilizing naturalistic paradigms to investigate the processes that support human memory. After graduating, she worked as a Junior Research Specialist in the Dynamic Memory Lab for two years. She is currently interested in the mechanisms underlying forgetting and its role in memory encoding and retrieval. She is also interested in understanding how temporal structure influences the construction of mental representation for events. Outside of the lab, Angelique enjoys spending time with family and friends, editing videos, and exercising.

Ata Karagoz

Graduate Student

BS: University of Texas at Austin (2018)
MS: Washington University in St. Louis (2022)

Ata Karagoz received his BS in Neuroscience from the University of Texas. During his undergraduate career he worked under Drs. Kate Sherrill and Hannah Roome in Dr. Alison Preston’s Lab, studying spatial memory in virtual navigation tasks. After graduating he worked as the lab manager for the Preston Lab for two years. His current work deals with the formation and manipulation of knowledge structures in narrative tasks. He is also interested in how reward can modulate memory processes such as pattern separation. Ata reads a lot of science fiction and is currently trying to pick up bass guitar.

Rayna Tang

Graduate Student

BS: University of Toronto (2022)
MS: Washington University in St. Louis (2024)

Rayna Tang received her Honours BS from the University of Toronto in Canada, where she specialized in Psychology and majored in Cognitive Science. During her undergraduate career, she worked in Dr. Michael Mack’s lab, studying the relationship between scene categorization and visual search. She also worked in Dr. Morgan Barense’s Memory and Perception Lab, understanding the memory formation of patients with amnesia. She did her undergraduate thesis in Dr. Asaf Gilboa’s lab, investigating the relationship between the ocular movement, imagination, and hippocampus activity in people with PTSD. Her current interests lie on the deconstruction of elements underlying episodic memory and their related brain mechanisms. Outside of the lab, Rayna spends her time on ballet, film photography, and trying cool stuff.