People
Director
Chandramallika Basak | Director
Associate Professor
Center for Vital Longevity
Department of Psychology, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
The University of Texas at Dallas
Office: 1600 Viceroy Drive, Rm 815b, Dallas, TX 75235
Phone: 972-883-3724
Email: cbasak@utdallas.edu
Doctoral Students
Amy Berglund-Barraza | Post-doctoral Research Associate
Email: amy@ridgetherapyllc.com
Dr. Berglund-Barraza is a long-time collaborator of Dr. Basak since her doctoral student days in Dr. Evans lab. She is recipient of a Friends of BrainHealth Award (2022), and she is working with Dr. Basak and LiNC lab on designing and running the funded project on adults with developmental language disorder as well as learning fMRI analyses.
Paulina Anna Skolasinska | Doctoral Student
Email: pas170003@utdallas.edu
Paulina joined the Basak lab in Fall, 2018 and has a master’s degree in psychology from University of Warsaw. Her first year project was focused on how physical fitness influences brain activations related to different cognitive control mechanisms involved during working memory updating. She is also involved in the BETTER and ViCTOR projects, particularly the neuroimaging aspect of it. She is building expertise on both neuro-correlational approach, using both MRI and fNIRS techniques, and functional connectivity analysis of large-scale brain networks engaged during task and at rest using fMRI data. She received the Friends of BrainHealth Visionary New Scientist Award (2021) that is partially funding a research project on cognitive intervention in older adults that uses a combination of mindfulness meditation and executive function training.
Francisco J. Sierra | Doctoral Student
Email: francisco.sierra@utdallas.edu
Francisco joined Basak lab in Fall, 2022, and is doing his doctoral studies in cognition and neuroscience. His first-year project is focused on cognitive and brain structure (gray mater volumes, cortical thickness) predictors of complex skill learning in healthy aging, using data from ongoing clinical trials. He is also interested in using fNIRS to evaluate skill learning of lab-developed games.
Micaela Andreo | Doctoral Student
Email: micaela.andreo@utdallas.edu
Micaela joined Basak lab in Fall, 2022, and is doing her doctoral studies in psychological sciences. She has an interest in memory in older adults, esp. prospective memory and interventions. Her first year project is focused on how adherence metrics during game play can impact learning of the game during a cognitive intervention, and how daily variations in psychosocial well-being are related to game adherence. She is also interested in aging brain’s structural and functional connectivity, and how these connectivity metrics change with training, and is therefore a key member in the BETTER Aging study.
Research Assistant
Abdul Malik Ayam | Undergraduate Student
Email: abdulmalik.ayam@utdallas.edu
Abdul Malik completed his undergraduate degree at UT Dallas. He is working on the BETTER Aging Phase IIB clinical trial in the Basak lab, and has been involved in other research projects (including, music study, neuroimaging analyses, etc.).
Masters Student Interns
Advika Venkataraman | MS Intern
Email: axv180052@utdallas.edu
Advika is a first year masters student in psychological science program at UT Dallas, and is doing her thesis training with Dr. Basak. She is currently getting experience in projects related to developmental language disorder and music memory.
Maha Abbasi | MS Intern
Email: maha.abbasi@utdallas.edu
Maha is doing her masters in applied cognition and neuroscience program at UT Dallas, and is doing her internship in the Basak lab in the BETTER Aging Study.
Undergraduate Students
Eric Hoang Nguyen | Undergraduate Research Assistant
Email: eric.nguyen2@utdallas.edu
Eric is an undergraduate student at UT Dallas who is a research assistant at the LiNC lab. He is assisting with data collection and neuroimaging data analysis in a music study and neuroimaging projects.
Farhan Ali | Undergraduate Student
Farhan, an undergraduate student at UT Dallas, assisting LiNC lab with data collection in a music study and assisted on a meta-analyses search with other students.
Email: farhan.ali@utdallas.edu
Esha Kanna | Undergraduate Student
Esha, an undergraduate student at UT Dallas, and working on her thesis project with Zaid and Dr. Basak on a meta-analysis on music interventions in elderly.
Email: esha.kanna@utdallas.edu
Zaid Fazal | Undergraduate Student
Zaid, an undergraduate student at UT Dallas, is working with Esha and Dr. Basak on a meta-analysis on music interventions in elderly.
Email: zaid.fazal@utdallas.edu
Christopher Konrad Elliott | Undergraduate Student
Email: cke180000@utdallas.edu
Chris, an undergraduate student at UT Dallas, is working on the BETTER Aging project and is interested in aging and memory.
Lab Alumni
Kaoru Nashiro| | Postdoctoral Research Associate at LiNC | Later position: Research Scientist at University of Southern California
M. Irene Cunha | Masters Student (ACN) and Research Assistant at LiNC | Later position: Physician at Hospital Central do Ex’ercito, Brazil
Alex Hinerman | Masters Student | Later Position: Adjunct Professor at Sandy Lake Community College, UT
Nithya Ramakrishnan | Masters Student (ACN) at LiNC | Later position: Research Engineer at Department of Psychiatry, UT Health Sciences, Houston
Xi Chen | Masters Student (ACN) at LiNC | Later position: Assistant Professor at Stony Brooke University
Erum Whyne | Masters Student (PS) at LiNC | Later position: Research Coordinator at VA North Texas Healthcare System, Dallas
Yuguang (Irene) Zhao | Masters Student (ACN) and Research Assistant at LiNC | Later position: Doctoral student at UT Dallas
Melissa Druskis | Masters Student (ACN) at LiNC | Later position: Board Certified Behavior Analyst at Therapy and Beyond, North Texas
Haripriya Srinivasaraghavan | Masters Student (ACN) at LiNC | Later position: Software Engineer
Aparna Gudimetla | Undergraduate Student (UT Dallas) at LiNC | Later Position: Medical School Student at Emory University
W. Christian Martin | Undergraduate Student (UT Dallas) at LiNC | Later position: Medical School Student at Texas A & M University
Wali Azeem | Undergraduate Student (UT Dallas) at LiNC
Sean Kothapally | Undergraduate Student (UT Dallas) at LiNC
Yoonchung (Laura) Choi | High School (Groton School, MA) Intern at LiNC | Current position: Undergraduate student at Georgetown University
Arit Banerjee | Masters Student ACN at LiNC | Later position: PhD student at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Amsha Reddy | Undergraduate Student (UT Dallas) at LiNC
Charles D. Wilder | Undergraduate Student (UT Dallas) at LiNC
John Moorman | Masters Student (ACN) at LiNC
Aaron Kruse| | Masters Student (ACN) at LiNC
Maisha Razzaque | Part-time Research Assistant at LiNC
Bhargavi Bhaskar | Research Assistant at LiNC | Later Position: Associate Strategist at PMG Digital Agency
Rahul Rajesh |Undergraduate Student (UT Dallas) and Masters Student (ACN) at LiNC | Later position: Medical School Student at University of Arkansas Medical School
Margaret A. O’Connell | PhD Student (Psychological Sciences) under Dr. Basak | Later Position: Clinical Trial Coordinator at Medspace
Nicholas R. Ray | PhD Student (Cognition and Neuroscience) under Dr. Basak | Later Position: Post-doctoral Associate in Columbia University
Evan T. Smith | PhD Student (Cognition and Neuroscience) under Dr. Basak | Later Position: Post-doctoral research associate at UT Dallas (Dr. Denise Park Lab)
Shuo Qin | PhD Student (Cognition and Neuroscience) under Dr. Basak and Post-doctoral Research Associate at LiNC lab | Later Position: Research Fellow at National University of Singapore
Andrew Sun | Full-time Research Assistant at LiNC | Later position: PhD student in Northeastern University
Glenn Hulon Sherard | Graduate Student at LiNC
Syed Sameer Ghazi | Undergraduate Student at LiNC
Elizabeth Victoria Manon | Undergraduate Student at LiNC