Visual Attention Lab

Victoria received her Ph.D. from UCLA where she worked with Dr. Phil Kellman. Her research has focused on optimizing perceptual learning in real-world categorization tasks, including facial identification and skin cancer classification. As a postdoctoral research fellow, she is interested in investigating visual search within the context of medical image perception and exploring the role of categories in search tasks. Outside of the lab, Victoria enjoys visiting new National Parks (current total: 28/63) and MLB ballparks (current total: 14/30).

Cailey Tennyson

Cailey received her Bachelor's degree in Computational Cognitive Science and a minor in English from UC Davis where she also worked as a research assistant in the Visual Cognition Lab under Dr. Joy Geng. Her research utilized VR to analyze the freeze behaviors that occur during real-world search. Outside of work, Cailey loves working with animals and continuing to develop her bowling skills.

Jian Chen

Jian's core work focuses on understanding how humans see, understand, and interact with information. She collaborate with colleagues in scientific areas of physics, biology, and medicine. Recently, Jian began to study mode of optimal search mediated by visualizations. She also attempts to explore how to aid people to acquire knowledge from multiple-sources (e.g., figures, tables, and texts in scholarly article cohorts).

Ecem Tavacioglu

Ecem is a Ph.D. candidate in Neuroscience at the University of Würzburg, studying attentional and learning processes in fear conditioning and extinction. Her research combines behavioral psychophysiology, eye-tracking, and computational modeling to better understand how we learn about threat and safety. As a visiting researcher at the Visual Attention Lab, she will focus on attentional bias in visual search and further develop her methodological skills. Outside the lab, she enjoys practicing yoga and creating ceramic art pieces.

Rana Guney

Rana Guney is a visiting medical student from İstinye University in Istanbul. Her academic focus lies in understanding the connection between the eye and the brain through a neuroscience-driven approach. She is particularly interested in exploring this connection in a clinically meaningful way — focusing on vision health, attention, and overall brain well-being. In the Visual Attention Lab, she is focused on deepening her understanding of visual sciences and further developing her research skills. Rana aims to bridge experimental neuroscience with clinical neurology to better understand how visual and attentional systems relate to patient health and care.