Our Team

Department of Psychiatry profile: https://psychiatry.wustl.edu/people/chad-sylvester-md-phd/

Dr. Sylvester is a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Washington University School of Medicine. He completed M.D. and Ph.D. (neuroscience) degrees in 2009, a general residency in psychiatry in 2012, and a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry in 2014, all at Washington University School of Medicine. Dr. Sylvester uses computer games and neuroimaging to study attention in youth with anxiety disorders.

Cat Camacho is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the lab. Cat completed her PhD in Neurosciences at WashU in 2022 and her BA in Psychology at Stanford in 2014. Cat studies the neurodevelopment that underlies emotion processing with the larger goal of understanding how socio-emotional dysfunctions associated with anxiety and depression come about. Outside of research, Cat enjoys board games, watching movies, drawing, and cooking. https://www.catcamacho.net/

Michael is an Instructor in Psychiatry at the Washington University School of Medicine. He completed his PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2018, where he studied socioaffective processing in externalizing adolescents. He uses computer games and fMRI to study emotion processing and moral decision-making.

Rebecca Schwarzlose is a Instructor in Psychiatry at the Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis. She completed her PhD in Neuroscience from MIT and formerly served as Editor of the scholarly reviews journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Dr. Schwarzlose studies the mechanisms of functional specialization in brain development with a particular focus on the developmental neural underpinnings of anxiety disorders.

Ramone Agard is a Saint Louis native and holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis. He assists the lab with constructing processing pipelines for fMRI data, as well as developing software for experimental tasks. Ramone collaborates with numerous studies in the SEAL lab to ensure technological needs are fulfilled. 

Emily comes to SEAL lab with years of experience in clinic and mental health settings here in St. Louis. She has worked with adolescents at a youth center that provided social, medical and mental health services and as an intake specialist for a mental health organization.

Emily currently conducts participant sessions including fMRI, EEG with eye tracking, and behavioral assessments for both infants and adolescents.

Victoria is a graduate from the University of Missouri with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Master’s in Social Work. She became clinically licensed in Social Work in 2017 and has previously worked at the Early Emotional Development Program at Washington University conducting behavioral assessments for teens and their caregivers.

Shelby graduated from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville with a B.S. in Psychology, as well as a minor in Women’s Studies. Shelby has experience in working with adolescents and adults in multiple settings such as residential, hospitals, and youth centers. Shelby currently coordinates multiple studies.

Christina (Hexin) is from Chengdu, China, and holds a B.A. in Psychology and Communication from UC Davis. She recently completed her M.S. in Applied Health and Behavior Research at Washington University School of Medicine and currently works as a professional rater at the SEAL lab.  She is experienced in conducting neuroimaging and behavioral sessions with children and adolescents. She is looking forward to studying the neurodevelopment of emotions and executive functions and their relationship to socio-emotional functioning in graduate school.

Christina is currently helping with participant sessions including fMRI, EEG with eye tracking, and behavioral assessments for both infants and adolescents

Molly Mendoza is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a Master of Social Work from Colorado State University.

Molly coordinates the Attention in Anxiety & ADHD (AAA) study which aims to characterize how attention-related brain circuits are altered in pediatric anxiety & ADHD. She conducts clinical interviews and fMRIs with children.

Joey Scanga is from Eureka, Missouri, and has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO). He assists with fMRI data processing and analysis tasks in support of various studies in the SEAL lab, in addition to developing and maintaining software used in conducting experiments related to fMRI, EEG, and eye tracking.

Alyssa is a PhD candidate in the Neurosciences program at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine. She graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2019 with degrees in Biology and Psychology, and a minor in Computational Neuroscience. Alyssa has prior experience using EEG to study the interface between sleep and disorders of consciousness. She is currently using precision functional mapping to study neonatal brain organization and development.