Meet Our Current Team
Fall Cohort 2024 Dinner
Cohort from left to right: Giuliana Macedo, Chloe Mondok, April Joyner, Chetan Desai, Alex Ma, Martin Wiener, Bryce Sullivan
Dr. Martin Wiener, PhD
Principal Investigator
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Martin is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at George Mason University, and the STAR Lab's Principal Investigator. He received his PhD in Psychology from University of Pennsylvania, his MS in Experimental/Theoretical Psychology from Villanova University, and his BA in Psychology from Rutgers University. In the past, he has worked at George Mason University as an Office of Naval Research Award postdoctoral fellow, worked with the Center for Functional Neuroimaging at University of Pennsylvania through the NIH Training Program in Neuroscience Neuroimaging Postdoctoral Fellowship program, received the Benjamin Franklin Predoctoral Fellowship at University of Pennsylvania, and worked as an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow specializing in Big Data & Analytics for the National Science Foundation. Martin's research interests are temporal perception and action, spatial navigation, magnitude processing, individual differences in cognition and decision making, and musical and rhythmic processing.​​
Chetan Desai, BS, BA, BS
Graduate Research Assistant
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​Chetan is a PhD student in the Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience program at George Mason University. He earned a BS in Biology from University of North Carolina at Greensboro, a BA in Psychology from California State University, Bakersfield and a BS in Computer Science from Western Governors University. His research in behavioral neuroscience started with the investigation of a neural correlate of human time sense using psychophysical methods and electroencephalography. This was followed by his work on a feature-based learning project in a systems neuroscience lab at Stanford University. His research interests include the relationship between movement and time perception, specifically the effect of movement on time perception in the context of decision making.
April Joyner, MA
Graduate Research Assistant
April is a PhD student in the Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Program at George Mason University. She recently received her Master's Degree from the University of Mississippi in Spring 2024. She received her BA in Psychology with a minor in Neuroscience from the University of Mississippi. Throughout her Master's Degree she studied how music listening impacts human memory processes. Her thesis focused on how music-induced physiological arousal influences spatial memory. Her research interests at GMU relate to differences between musicians and non-musicians in processing time using rhythm.
Alex Ma, BA
Graduate Research Assistant
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Alex is a PhD student in the Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience program at George Mason University. He graduated from Vanderbilt University in Spring of 2021 with a BA in Neuroscience and a minor in Computational Biology. During undergrad, he studied performance variance of portable image classification networks. His research interests are cognitive computational neuroscience, especially computational models of timing and image classification.​
Giuliana Macedo, BA
Graduate Research Assistant
Giuliana is a Master’s student in the Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience program at George Mason University. She graduated from Florida International University with a BA in Psychology. After her undergrad, she spent some time working at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical School as a Clinical Research Coordinator for the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative, a study sponsored by the Michael J. Fox Foundation. She is interested in researching bilingual/multilingual people’s perception of time.
Chloe Mondok, MA
Graduate Research Assistant
Chloe is a PhD student in the Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience program at George Mason University. She recently graduated from Moravian University in Spring 2021 with a BS in Neuroscience with minors in Music and Art History. During her undergraduate, she studied the neuroprotective effects of curcumin and vitamin E in rat models of Parkinson’s Disease. She received her MA at George Mason University in Spring 2024 in Psychology (Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience concentration). Her research interests include time perception, specifically in regard to elements of music, such as rhythm and has utilized methodologies including electroencephalography (EEG) and transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS).
Tutku Öztel, PhD
Postdoc
Tutku received her doctoral degree from Koç University, Istanbul, in 2024 under the supervision of Professor Fuat Balcı. Her primary research interest lies in the cognitive architecture of metric error monitoring, utilizing various methodological approaches. While she also investigated temporal representation and human-like temporal error monitoring in mice, her doctoral dissertation primarily focused on the factors that guide temporal error monitoring ability. Additionally, she examined the psychophysical characteristics of self-evaluation mechanisms in metric error monitoring and Bayesian response updating according to relative metric information. Now she aims to explore the unique neural substrates for the different components of metric information processing within the context of metacognition.
Bryce Sullivan
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Bryce is an undergraduate student in both the Psychology and Neuroscience program at George Mason University with a concentration in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience. He will be receiving his B.S. in the Double Major in Fall 2024. He has been helping in the STAR lab on various projects since Fall 2023 and will assist in the lab through the end of Summer 2025. He is interested in a wide range of topics in psychology and neuroscience but is most interested in the developmental neurobiology of neural networks, neuroinflammation, and cognition. Additionally, he also completed his psychology honors thesis in Spring 2024 with Dr. Sarah Fischer's Impulse Lab studying reaction time as a behavioral marker of disordered eating behaviors in adolescents and is working in Dr. Ted Dumas' PBNJ lab investigating hippocampal development in mice with chimeric NMDAR GluN2 subunits.
Lab Alumni and Past Team Members
Dr. Giovanna Mioni, PhD
Visiting Senior Postdoctoral Researcher
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In Fall 2018, Giovanna was the STAR lab's Senior-post doc visiting from University of Padova (Italy). Her interest is on time perception and cognitive functions (i.e. attention and working memory) involved in temporal processing in healthy and clinical populations. Moreover, she is interested in the effects of facial expression of emotion on time perception in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients with and without mild cognitive impairment. She also uses transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) and transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) to investigate the brain regions and networks of temporal processing.​
Farah Bader, MPH, PhD
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In 2022, Farah graduated with a PhD in Neuroscience from the Interdisciplinary Program at George Mason University. In the STAR lab, she studied how feedback modulates the perception of short visual interval durations using a modified time reproduction task. Her research interests centered on how we detect and compensate for errors in timing as we learn and how to assess the extent of human time awareness. Her dissertation work employed both behavioral measures and simultaneous fMRI-EEG to explore the neural regions and electrophysiological signatures associated with temporal metacognition, time learning, and improvements in time estimation. She earned a BS in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology from Emory, and an MPH from Johns Hopkins. She has worked for the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense.
Ayana Cameron, MA
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In 2021, Ayana graduated with an MA in the Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience from George Mason University. As an active duty Air Force Officer, her experience and work has been focused on behavioral analysis for the U.S. Military, specifically looking at the cognitive processes and socio-cultural factors that influence decision-making. Ayana graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2014 where she received her BS in Behavioral Sciences. ​She has a broad interest in the cognitive basis of time and spatial awareness, particularly as they relate to music or auditory stimuli and decision-making.
Audrey Corbet, MA
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In 2023, Audrey graduated with a MA in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience from George Mason. In 2021, she received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from George Mason University with a concentration in Clinical Psychology. Audrey is interested in studying flow states, meditation, and athletes and how these all play role on the perception of time. As an athlete herself, Audrey has competed competitively throughout her undergraduate and graduate careers, running cross country and track for George Mason. She hopes to pursue a career in research, specifically in behavioral research.
Colleen Gerrity, MA
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Colleen graduated with an MA in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience from George Mason University in 2022. Her research included the roles of cognitive load, attention, and memory on time perception. She also graduated with a BS in Psychology and a minor in Neuroscience from George Mason University in 2021. As an undergraduate, she completed the Honors in Psychology program, presenting a thesis on the effects of music and noise on the perception of time.
Keri Gladhill, PhD
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​Dr. Keri Anne Gladhill completed her PhD in Psychology with a concentration in cognitive neuroscience from George Mason University working with Dr. Martin Wiener to better understand the effects of movement parameters on time perception. She is currently a post doctoral scholar in the Nee Lab working at Florida State University in the Psychology Department with Dr. Derek Nee studying cognitive control. Previously she received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Shippensburg University, followed by a Master of Sciences in Experimental Psychology at Saint Joseph’s University.
Evie Robinson, MA
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In 2019, Evie graduated with an MA in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience from George Mason University. Currently, a PhD student at the University of Arizona, she is interested in asymmetries between the perception of spatial and temporal dimensions. Specifically, her research investigates spatial and temporal reproduction, time dilation, and spatial navigation. Her psychophysical techniques include EEG, TMS, fMRI, and virtual reality. Evie graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Psychology from the University of North Florida.​
Adam K. Shelp, MA
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In 2019, Adam graduated with an MA in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience from George Mason University, and is interested in time and time-related phenomena, fear and anxiety, and sensation and perception. Adam graduated cum laude with a BS in Psychology, with a double minor in biology and music, from Young Harris College in Georgia.
Candice T. Stanfield-Wiswell, PhD
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In 2023, Candice graduated with a PhD in Psychology with a concentration in Cognitive & Behavioral Neuroscience from George Mason University. Her dissertation focused on better understanding how numerical magnitudes and contextual mechanisms in study design parameters differentially alter our ability to perceive time. In the STAR Lab, she investigated the neural mechanisms involved in human temporal, spatial, and magnitude (e.g., numerosity) processing as a pathway to understanding how we perceive and interact with our environment. Before attending GMU, she graduated cum laude from Northern Kentucky University with a BA in Psychological Science and minor in Philosophy, and earned an MA in Psychological Research from Texas State University.
Iris Talebi, MA
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In 2022, ​Iris graduated with a Master’s in Psychology in the Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience program at George Mason University. Her thesis was based on the impact of impulsivity and psychopathy to time perception. Currently, she is working for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at its Janelia Research Campus. Where Iris works on the FLYEM team working to build a map of the drosophila brain. During her free time she enjoys traveling the world and has been to 22 countries, spanning 4 continents.
Mohammad Alquraishi, BS
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Mohammad received his Bachelor of Science in Psychology from George Mason University in the summer of 2019 with concentrations in Clinical and Cognitive Behavioral Neuroscience. Mohammad is broadly interested in time perception, so he took a class with Dr. Wiener on Brain and Music, and started helping the STAR lab graduate members with various projects. After graduating, he continued to work in the STAR lab as a post-bac research assistant. Recently he proposed and developed a temporal reproduction task in which he collected over 20 participants to explore the difference between visual and auditory modality for filled and empty intervals. He is also working with Human Emotions Research Laboratory (HERL) on developing a computerized treatment for inmates in the local jail population.
Georgie Melrose, BA
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Georgie (they/them) graduated from George Mason University in May 2019 with a BA in Psychology, and minor in Philosophy and Law. Their work in the STAR lab was part of the Honors Psychology program at GMU. They performed an fMRI meta-analysis on the overlap and distinction of numerosity and duration networks, in response to the theory of a Generalized Magnitude System. They also worked with the OSCAR GMU program on autonomous vehicles, developing a databases of information for future work in the AV lab, as well as writing a policy paper on making autonomous vehicles and transportation systems equipped for climate change.