Bria is thrilled to be an Assistant Professor at UC San Diego! She is broadly interested in how we learn to perceive our visual world so effortlessly.

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Bria completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University in the Language & Cognition Lab, her Ph.D. in the Harvard Vision Lab and the Laboratory for Developmental Studies, and spent two years in the Cogmaster program at École Normale Supérieure in Paris working with Sid Kouider and Emmanuel Dupoux at LSCP. As an undergraduate, she worked with Caitlin Fausey and Lera Boroditsky at Stanford University.

Bria is the first academic in her family, and she is a mom of two young kids. She is committed to making science more open (transparent, reproducible, and inclusive) and in using her privilege to increase opportunities in science for people from marginalized backgrounds. 

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brialong.com | curriculum vitae

A.J. recently completed her PhD in Psychological & Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College, advised by Dr. Caroline Robertson. Prior to graduate school, she studied Cognitive Science at Yale University and completed a M.S. in Speech-Language Pathology at the University of North Carolina. While a graduate student at Dartmouth, A.J. combined eyetracking, virtual reality, and large language models to study patterns of naturalistic visual attention in real-world environments. Her dissertation research sought to understand what factors guide individuals’ attention, and how this may differ in clinical conditions, such as autism. A.J. is excited to continue using research methods that offer insight into naturalistic behavior in everyday contexts, and she’s eager to jump into research with developmental populations. Ultimately, she hopes to understand the mechanisms linking visual attention and higher order cognitive processes in both typical and atypical development.

Jane completed her undergrad at UCSD, where she worked with Eva Wittenberg and was advised by Judy Fan and Ben Bergen for her Honors Thesis. After graduation, she spent two years at UT Austin working with Chen Yu as a lab technician in Developmental Intelligence Lab. She is broadly interested in children’s concept learning and multimodal learning. It fascinates her that a child can easily understand fundamental properties of objects from a few examples while a highly trained model fails short. She would like to leverage behavioral experiments and use computational modeling to study children’s language and visual development in real-world contexts! 

​janeyang07.github.io | curriculum vitae

Haoyu graduated from the University of Michigan with a combined BS/MS in Mathematics and minors in Linguistics and German. She then spent two years at MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences working with Dr. Rebecca Saxe and Dr. Frederik Kamps. She is interested in what cognitive processes, biological structures, and/or environmental features support human babies’ abilities to learn rapidly from sensory information, and how they change over time and experience.

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haoyudu.github.io

Lynna graduated from Princeton University in 2026 where she studied Psychology, with minors in Linguistics and Cognitive Science. She is interested in how children acquire, map, and extend labels onto the objects in their surrounding noisy environment, with a more specialized interest in how social factors, such as caregivers, actively shape this process. She is particularly excited about how naturalistic research methods, alongside more traditional in-lab paradigms, can be used to explore these questions. Outside of the lab, Lynna enjoys cafe-hopping, looking at the stinkin’ cute (pun intended) sea lions at La Jolla Cove, and going to concerts.

Tarun graduated from Case Western Reserve University in 2023 where he studied Cognitive Science and Computer Science. He is interested in examining the nature of early conceptual and visual representations, and how they relate to the social contexts within which children are embedded. He would also like to leverage multimodal models to better understand these representations. Outside of the lab, he enjoys going on runs and birdwatching.

​tarunsepuri.com

Juan Pablo is a 4th year undergraduate at UC San Diego, majoring in Cognitive Science with a specialization in Design and Interaction. He is interested in how people learn from interacting with objects and technology, especially in virtual reality. He is also curious about how a person’s surroundings or setting can shape their behavior. In addition, Juan is interested in language acquisition and in understanding how children learn. Outside of the lab, he enjoys running in nature, trying new food, and listening to live music.

Rochelle is a 4th year Psychology major at UC San Diego with prior experience being a preschool teacher which inspired her curiosity about how children learn and grow in everyday settings. She is particularly interested in how object exploration, visual perception, and social play contribute to cognitive and emotional development, and how the neurological structures involved in these processes evolve as infants learn. Outside the lab, Rochelle enjoys watching movies and going to the San Diego Zoo.

Alex is a 3rd year undergraduate student at UC San Diego, double majoring in Mathematics and Cognitive Science. He is interested in what we can learn from how children build representational and categorical spaces, and how these insights can be applied to develop better machine learning models. He is also interested in exploring how representational spaces vary across languages and multilinguals. Outside of the lab, he enjoys cooking, photography, and practicing Chinese lion dance.

Masha is a 2nd year undergraduate student at UC San Diego, majoring in Cognitive Science with a specialization in Machine Learning and Neural Computation. She is interested in how children learn from visual experience, and how machine learning can help model these learning processes. She hopes to strengthen her skills in data analysis and computational modeling through her work in the lab. Outside of the lab, she enjoys drawing, ballet, and playing guitar.

Mira is a 3rd year undergraduate student at UC San Diego studying Clinical Psychology. She is also interested in social and developmental psychology, especially neurodevelopmental conditions like autism. She hopes to understand how different learning environments in early childhood shape children’s personal development and how children both with and without special needs can be best supported by equitable early childhood education and clinical therapies. Outside of the lab, she enjoys concerts, crocheting, drawing, reading, and trying new foods.

Emma is a 3rd year Cognitive Science major at UC San Diego. She is interested in how children naturally learn, particularly how they acquire language through visual perception and auditory experiences. She hopes to support and enhance children’s learning by developing educational tools and applying thoughtful, child-centered design. Outside the lab, she enjoys running, karaoke, and going to concerts.

Isabel is a 4th year undergraduate student at UCSD majoring in Psychology with a minor in Data Science. She is interested in using computational tools and machine learning to make insights in psychological research, specifically within social and development psychology. Through her studies, Isabel aims to strengthen her skills in data organization, statistical modeling, and interpretive analysis. Outside of the lab, she enjoys rock climbing, cafes, and learning to cook.

Tavishi is a 3rd year undergraduate student at UC San Diego, double majoring in Cognitive Science: Machine Learning/Neural Computation, and Cinematic Arts, with a minor in Mathematics. She is interested in understanding how exposure to different visual and auditory stimuli can influence learning mechanisms, cognitive development, and emotional perception in children and adults. She hopes to explore these areas through computational and statistical modeling, as well as behavioral experiments. Outside of the lab, Tavishi enjoys filmmaking, singing, acting, and playing guitar.

Jason is a 3rd year student at UC San Diego, double majoring in Cognitive Science and Philosophy. He is broadly interested in how children learn from their visual experience in naturalistic settings, specifically how they form representations, categories, and concepts that support their development of higher cognitive processes. Ultimately, he aims to explore visual-cognitive development through computational modeling and behavioral experiments, while drawing on theoretical insights from philosophy. Outside of the lab, he enjoys hiking, playing soccer, and reading.