Lab Members
Lab Members
Lab Director
Ian Ballard is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Riverside. He is affiliated with the Cognitive and Cognitive Neuroscience area of the Psychology Department and the UCR Neuroscience Graduate Program. He uses an integrative approach in which insights from statistical learning, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology inspire novel experimental probes of the relationship between goals and learning. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health.
Graduate Students
Daniel Peixoto completed his undergraduate studies in biotechnology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, where he gained experience working with animal models of neuroinflammation. He then pursued a master's degree at the Neuroscience Institute of Alicante in Spain, where he investigated the role of a transcription factor in mediating microglial reactivity. Daniel is currently a neuroscience PhD student at UCR working under the supervision of Professor Ballard. His main research goal is related to the study of cognitive resilience (the ability of the brain to maintain normal cognition despite disease/injury). By employing both structural and functional analyses in human subjects, he hopes to elucidate the neural mechanisms that account for this fascinating property of the brain.
Lab Manager
Shannan Chen graduated from New York University with a B.A. in Psychology in May 2021. Her research interests include the role of emotion on reward learning & goal-pursuit processes. Additionally, Shannan is curious about the neural mechanisms of rumination & worry among individuals with mood disorders. She intends to pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology, with a focus on emotion regulation.
Collaborators
Lauren Ellman, Temple University
Anastasia Kiyonaga, University of California, San Diego
Ann Kring, University of California, Berkeley
Regina Lapate, University of California, Santa Barbara
Yuan Chang Leong, University of Chicago
Sam McDougle, Yale University
Vishnu Murty, Temple University
Ioannis Pappas, University of Southern California
Angela Radulescu, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai