Principal Investigator
Valerie Carr, PhD
Valerie earned a BS in Biological Psychology from the College of William and Mary and a PhD in Neuroscience from UCLA. As a PhD student and later as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, she used structural and functional MRI to investigate the neural basis of episodic memory in both younger and older adults. As a Professor at SJSU, Valerie's goal is to leverage her cognitive neuroscience background to elucidate strategies for improving brain health, memory, and executive function across the lifespan. She teaches courses relating to neuroscience, learning and memory, and computer programming. Regarding the latter, she is actively involved in pedagogical research examining optimal strategies for teaching interdisciplinary computing. She also manages cooperative agreements between researchers at SJSU and NASA Ames Research Center.
Research Assistants
Michelle Baca Reinke, MA
Michelle completed both her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Psychology at SJSU. She continues to work as a research assistant in the lab, supporting collaborative work with the Hippocampal Subfields Group and Applied Programming Experiences (APEX) project. She plans to pursue a PhD in cognitive neuroscience.
Hannah Leung
Hannah is graduating senior majoring in Psychology and minoring in Deaf Education. In addition to assisting Master's students with their thesis projects, she is working on a literature review regarding structural and functional brain changes in individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Sapna Sangmitra, MS
Sapna earned an MS in Engineering at SJSU with a focus on AI systems that bridge research and real-world impact. She lends her extensive coding and AI knowledge to ongoing projects in the lab, and she also assists with developing and improving course materials in the age of generative AI.
Lab alumni: Graduate Students
David Amy, MA
Michelle Baca Reinke, MA
Eunji Back, MA
Chalise Carlson, MA
Joanne Ha, MA
Hyong Woo (Alex) Hahm, MA
Shilpa Hampole, MA
Nicole Henderson, MA
Madison Morocco, MA
Victoria Paoloni, MA
Matthew Reynolds, MA
Dewey Tran, MA