Congratulations to undergraduate research assistant Julian De Freitas, who has just received a Summer Fellowship from Yale's Psychology Department, to support his ongoing work this coming summer on 'attentional rhythm'! (Julian was also recently selected as a Whiffenpoof for next year, so perhaps he will sing the instructions when he runs subjects?) (March 2012)

Our lab just got a lot cuter! Congratulations to Alice Albrecht and Perry Fetterman on the arrival of our newest lab affiliate, Atticus Albrecht Fetterman! (January 2012)

Welcome to new graduate student Chaz Firestone! Chaz hails from Bill Warren's lab at Brown University, where he earned both a BA in cognitive science and an MA in philosophy. He has biked across the country, reported live from Antarctica, and he knows how to escape from a fox. Chaz has also done a bit of writing on the side, for venues such as Nature and the Atlantic Monthly. Here at Yale, Chaz is gearing up to study the relationships between perception and cognition. (August 2011)

Congratulations to former lab affiliate George Newman, who is starting this month as an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Yale's School of Management! We're glad that he'll be just down the street from now on, so that we can continue our collaborative studies on how we can efficiently communicate information by exploiting the nature of perception. (July 2011)

Congratulations to Tao Gao! At this past weekend's commencement ceremonies, Tao not only received his Ph.D., but he received the James B. Grossman Dissertation Prize, given annually to the best doctoral dissertation in Psychology at Yale. (May 2011)

This year, Brian will be serving as the President of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, delivering the keynote address at the Object Perception Attention and Memory meeting, and branching out beyond the usual venues to deliver an address at the Eastern division meeting of the other APA. (April 2011)

Congratulations to Tao Gao, who recently defended his PhD dissertation on Visual Roots of Social Cognition: Perceiving Animacy and Intentionality, and who has just accepted an appointment as postdoctoral fellow in Josh Tenenbaum's Computational Cognitive Science Lab in the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences at MIT. (April 2011)

Welcome to new graduate student Emily Ward! Emily hails most recently from Russell Epstein's lab at UPenn, where she worked on neuroimaging studies of spatial cognition. Before that, she was an undergraduate at Franklin & Marshall College. Here at Yale, Emily is studying the nature of visual awareness, and is also working in Marvin Chun's lab. Congrats to Emily for being awarded a 2010 Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation! (September 2010)

Brian spoke on WNPR this week about how results from vision science can shed light on aspects of M.C. Escher's art -- and vice versa. (July 2010)

Welcome to visiting postdoctoral fellow Jan Zwickel! Jan, who currently hails from the Experimental Psychology group at Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat in Germany, received his PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, and will be with us for the next half-year, funded by a grant from the Max Planck Institute. With our group, Jan will be continuing his studies of the perception of animacy and intentionality. (June 2010)

Congratulations to Alice Albrecht, who has been selected to receive a 2010 Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, awarded in part on the basis of her work on perceptual averaging! (Kudos also to past undergraduate collaborator and co-author Phillip Isola, who also received this award this year to support his graduate studies in the Brain & Cognitive Sciences department at MIT.) (April 2010)

Congratulations to Brian, who has been promoted to full professor at Yale, and to father at home! (March 2010)

Welcome to new graduate student Aysu Suben! Aysu hails from Franklin and Marhsall College and just arrived this fall to begin her studies and projects in the lab. (September 2009)

Congratulations to Nick Turk-Browne! At this past weekend's commencement ceremonies, Nick not only received his Ph.D., but he received the James B. Grossman Dissertation Prize, given annually to the best doctoral dissertation in Psychology at Yale. (May 2009)

Congratulations to Nick Turk-Browne, who recently defended his PhD dissertation on The Nature of Visual Statistical Learning, and who has just accepted a tenure-track appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Princeton University. Nick will be setting up his own lab this summer, and will start his new position in the fall! (April 2009)

Congratulations to Josh New, who has just accepted a tenure-track appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Barnard College in New York City. Josh will be setting up his own lab this summer, and will start his new position in the fall! (April 2009)

Congratulations to undergraduate research assistant Jinjin Sun, who has received a Dean's Summer Fellowship in the Social Sciences and Humanities from Yale College to support research in our laboratory over the summer. Jinjin will be continuing her research on how, why, and when we perceive animacy and goal-directedness in simple animations. (April 2009)

Congratulations to former undergraduate research assistant Phillip Isola. He managed a year of computer programming, but in the end he just couldn't stay away from cognitive science -- and so he will be starting this fall as a graduate student in the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences at MIT. We wish him the best as he pursues his interests in computational modeling of cognition and perception. (April 2009)

Congratulations to Tao Gao, who has received a 2009 VSS Vision Research Travel Award for the talk he will give this summer at the Vision Sciences Society on the perception of animacy. This is an especially impressive accomplishment this year, since there were over 300 applicants for these awards! (February 2009)

Welcome to new graduate students Alice Albrecht and Brandon Liverence! Both Alice (coming from Lynn Robertson's lab at Berkeley) and Brandon (returning to academia after a stint in the real world, after his undergraduate days at Stanford) are arriving this summer to begin their studies and their projects in the lab. (July 2008)

Congratulations to Jon Flombaum, who recently defended his PhD dissertation on Persisting Objects: Building Blocks of Attention, Memory and Action, and who has just accepted a tenure-track appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. Jon will be making this transition to set up his own lab in January, 2009. Jon's work on the horizon is so interesting that Brian is seriously considering applying later this year to work in Jon's lab as a graduate student. (June 2008)

Congratulations to lab alumnus Erik Cheries! After a year of postdoctoral work at the Laboratory of Developmental Studies at Harvard, he has just accepted a tenure-track appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at UMass Amherst, where he'll be establishing his own cognitive development lab. (June 2008)

Congratulations to lab affiliate George Newman, Ph.D.! After obtaining his doctorate earlier this spring, George has accepted a postdoctoral position in the Consumer Decision Making Laboratory at the Yale School of Management. We are delighted that Dr. Newman will remain in the neighborhood, as we continue our collaborations. (June 2008)

Congratulations to lab affiliate Justin Junge, Ph.D.! Having obtained his degree in experimental psychology, the newly-minted Dr. Junge will now be focusing for a while on his theoretical interests, while he works as a postdoctoral fellow with Daniel Dennett in the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. (June 2008)

Congratulations to lab affiliate Nic Noles, Ph.D.! Having just obtained his doctoral degree, Nic will shortly be heading out to continue his studies as a postdoctoral fellow, working with Susan Gelman in the Concepts & Theories in Human Development Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. (June 2008)

Congratulations to undergraduate research assistants Riana Betzler and Samantha Ellner, each of whom has received a Dean's Summer Fellowship in the Social Sciences and Humanities from Yale College to support research in our laboratory over the summer. Riana will continue her research on visual statistical learning, and also her studies in collaboration with Laurie Santos on the tunnel effect in nonhuman primates. Sam will continue her studies of object persistence and visual tracking. (May 2008)

Congratulations to former undergraduate research assistant and senior thesis student Alex White, who has just decided to follow up on his gig as a Fulbright Scholar (working with Alex Holcombe at the University of Sydney) by attending graduate school in experimental psychology and vision research in the Department of Psychology at NYU. We look forward to having him take a trip up on Metro-North to present his latest research in our lab meetings! (May 2008)

Congratulations to Erik Cheries, Ph.D.! Earlier this month Erik defended his PhD dissertation on Constraints on Infants' Object Representations, and he is now off to live the idyllic postdoctoral life, working with Susan Carey and Liz Spelke at the Laboratory of Developmental Studies at Harvard University. (June 2007)

Congratulations to Maya Shankar, who had an unusually eventful graduation ceremony this month. Beyond earning her B.A., she was awarded the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize -- a great honor bestowed by Yale on the "senior who, through the combination of intellectual achievement, character, and personality, shall be adjudged by the faculty to have done the most for Yale by inspiring in his or her classmates an admiration and love for the best traditions of high scholarship." We wish Maya the best on the next stage of her career, as she heads to Oxford! (May 2007)

Congratulations to Alex White, who has just been named a 2007 Fulbright Scholar! As a result, Alex will be continuing his studies of visual cognition next year at the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney in Australia, working on aspects of temporal perception with Alex Holcombe. (March 2007)

Congratulations to Nick Turk-Browne, who has just been awarded the 2006 Science Council Early Researcher Award from the American Psychological Association -- "to recognize and reward an outstanding student research project completed before the dissertation"! Only 2-3 Early Researcher awards are given out yearly in the entire field of psychology, so this is a great honor! (November 2006)

Congratulations to Maya Shankar, who has just been named a 2007 Rhodes Scholar -- and who as a result will be studying next year at Oxford, in the Department of Experimental Psychology! (November 2006)

Congratulations to Jon Flombaum! Not content with his 2003 Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, Jon has now been awarded a predoctoral National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Mental Health! (September 2006)

Congratulations to Maya Shankar, who has been awarded the Hart Lyman Prize -- a Yale award for "that member of the Junior Class who shall have made through his or her efforts the best record of accomplishment intellectually and socially. It is generally regarded as the most distinguished prize for a member of the junior class." Maya will now be taking over as honorary head of the lab for the next month. (September 2006)

Congratulations to Josh New, who has been awarded a 3-year National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Mental Health to support his postdoctoral fellowship! Josh's new award will support his work on visual cognition both in normal individuals and in autistic spectrum disorder. (September 2006)

Congratulations to Hoon Choi, who recently defended his PhD dissertation on New Frontiers in Causal Perception, and who is now off to Boston University to do a postdoc in Takeo Watanabe's Vision Sciences Lab! (April 2006)

Congratulations to Maya Shankar and Alex White, both of whom have received Dean's Summer Fellowships in the Social Sciences and Humanities from Yale College, to support their research this summer in our laboratory! (April 2006)

Congratulations to several folks in the lab for earning recent conference travel awards! Nick Turk-Browne has received a Student Travel Fellowship in honor of his work on visual statistical learning, to support his trip to present this work at the Vision Sciences Society in Sarasota, FL. Maya Shankar has also received a travel grant to present her work at VSS: a Yale Science and Engineering Research Travel Prize in honor of her work on object persistence and topology. Finally, Erik Cheries has received an Early Career Award in honor of his work on object persistence, to support his trip to present this work at the International Conference on Infant Studies in Kyoto, Japan! (April 2006)

Congratulations to everyone in the lab, for earning two recent awards from the American Psychological Association: the 2005 Robert L. Fantz Memorial Award and the 2006 Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology. (Well, these were technically given to Brian, but clearly they are both really due to the fantastic research of all the current and recent students in the lab, for which Brian was just a convenient proxy!) (January 2006)

Congratulations to Steve Mitroff, who has accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University, to begin during the summer of 2005! (April 2005)

Congratulations to Nick Turk-Browne, who has been awarded a Postgraduate Scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada! (March 2005)

Congratulations to Jon Flombaum, who has been awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation! (July 2003)