OUR TEAM
Principle Investigators
Dr. Ho Ming Chow, PhD
Dr. Chow received his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Engineering at the University of Hong Kong. After working as an engineer for few years, he became interested in studying human cognition and went to Germany for his doctoral study. He obtained his PhD. in Cognitive Sciences with an emphasis on Cognitive Psychology at the University of Osnabrück. He completed his postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health. Before joining the University of Delaware in 2019, he was a research faculty at the University of Michigan and Nemours Children’s Hospital, Delaware.
Dr. Evan Usler, PhD
Dr. Usler is an Assistant Professor in Communication Sciences & Disorders in the College of Health Sciences at the University of Delaware and the director of the Interpersonal Neurophysiology Lab. He received his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from Purdue University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Boston University and MGH Institute of Health Professions.
Staff
Samuel Farrand, MS, CCC-SLP
Research Coordinator
Samuel Farrand is a speech language pathologist in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders in the College of Health Sciences at University of Delaware. He received his Master’s in Sciences in Speech Language Pathology from Salus University.
Nicole Guarino, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Dr. Guarino received her BA in Neuroscience from Franklin & Marshall University where her research was principally focused on the effects of stress on anxiety and substance use. She then attended a post-baccalaureate program at the University of Pennsylvania studying the cognitive effects of infant head injuries. She received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Thomas Jefferson University with a focus on the mechanisms of mitochondrial dysfunction in familial ALS. She is currently studying the biological mechanism of stutter.
Pancy C.Y. Pang, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
Dr. Pang holds a BBA in Business Administration from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and a BA in Psychology from Ohio University. She pursued an MSc in Psychological Research at Bangor University, UK, focusing on influence of expertise on visual art processing. Her academic journey culminated in a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Leipzig, Germany, where she explored spatial attention in somatosensory processing. Currently, her research focuses on utilizing neuroimaging and noninvasive neuromodulation techniques to study stuttering.
Students
Janina Boecher
PhD Student
Janina is a PhD student at the department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science. She graduated in 2018 with a B.A. in English Linguistics & Literature and obtained an M.A. in Linguistics in 2020. She currently works with Dr. Evan Usler at the Interpersonal Neurophysiology Lab to study the phonetic characteristics of speech in individuals with developmental stuttering. She is interested in oscillatory processes in the brain that govern speech perception and may underlie atypical entrainment to rhythmic sequences in people who stutter. Janina hopes to automatize computation of acoustic rhythm measures, such that they can be used as practical assessment tools in clinical contexts.
Gabrielle Brumond
Master Student
Gabby Brumond is pursuing her Master’s of Science in Neuroscience through the accelerated 4+1 program with Dr. Usler as her mentor. She graduated from the University of Delaware with her Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience in 2023. Gabby is interested in researching active inference theory, mindfulness, meditation, and the concept of flow. She is currently studying the effects of the flow state on neural correlates of precision-weighted auditory prediction error through an active inference perspective.
Princess Calderon
Undergraduate Student
Princess Calderon is an undergraduate, world scholar, pursuing a B.S. in Cognitive Science with a concentration in Speech-Language Pathology and a minor in Neuroscience. Her passion for this field is deeply rooted in her experience working with children, where she improved her skills in articulation therapy. She aims to apply her knowledge and enthusiasm to make meaningful contributions towards more effective diagnoses of communication disorders.
Lexa de Sadow
Bachelor Student
Lexa de Sadow is an undergraduate student in her senior year at the University of Delaware. She’s majoring in cognitive science and is on the pre-professional speech-language pathology track with a minor in disability studies. She hopes to go to grad school after completing her bachelor’s degree, and she aspires to work in a school setting with children with disabilities in the future.
Riley Gates
Bachelor Student
Hello! I’m Riley Gates and I am a junior studying linguistics and Mandarin!
I love tea and nature, and I’m very happy to be working in the lab!
Grace Gervino
PhD Student
Grace received her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from The Pennsylvania State University in 2021 and her Master of Science in Psychological and Brain Sciences from Villanova University in 2023. As part of her master’s thesis, she used the ERP technique to investigate the temporal precision of sensory predictions during speech planning in adults who stutter and received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship supporting her work. Grace is currently a Ph.D. student in the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program and is co-advised by Dr. Usler and Dr. Chow. She is interested in using neurophysiological and neuroimaging techniques to study sensory predictions and feedback monitoring during motor planning in adults and children who stutter.
Joseph Koski
Graduate Student
Joseph Koski is a first year graduate student at the University of Delaware, studying Cognitive science within the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science. He recently graduated from UD with a Bachelors in neuroscience and hopes to obtain a Phd in neuroscience or a related field. His research interests include neurological diseases as well as neuroimaging techniques.
Bryan Lamot
PhD Student
Bryan received his Bachelor of Science degree in biomolecular sciences from Central Connecticut State University in 2022. There he had been working towards streamlining a high-throughput screening protocol aimed to identify soil-derived bacteria for signs of antibiotic production effective against the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in Animal and Food Science with an interest in the contribution of aberrant lysosomal enzyme trafficking to the development of the stuttering fluency disorder.
Sayan Nanda
PhD Student
Sayan received his Master of Science in Data Informatics from the University of Southern California in 2019 and his Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in 2017. Sayan is currently a Ph.D. student in the Communication Sciences and Disorders department. Sayan is primarily interested in stuttering research and the application of machine learning techniques in the same. His focus is on neuroimaging and whole-exome sequencing data.
Amarachukwu Onaga
Undergraduate Student
Amarachukwu Onaga is a sophomore student at the University Of Delaware who is a neuroscience major with a minor in cognitive science. She is currently pursuing a BS In Neuroscience and is excited to be working in this lab to learn how to be a researcher and gain professional development.
Charitha Sumeet
Master Student
Charitha Sumeet is currently pursuing an MS in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Delaware. Her previous research experience focused on utilizing processed fish waste to investigate collagen cryptic peptides. She gained her industrial experience as a Scientific Analyst and was involved in bio-curation and data mining of research data while ensuring it’s quality from research studies based on pre-clinical trials for drug development. Currently, she is interested in exploring the gut-brain axis and its impact on speech development through MRI, neuroimaging analysis along with microbial genome analysis.
Vishruta Prashant Yawatkar
PhD Student
Vishruta earned an integrated BS-MS degree from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune in 2018. While at IISER, she studied the acoustic introductory gestures in songbirds. As a part of her master’s thesis, she worked at the National University of Singapore, where she analyzed underwater bioacoustics data to study the learning of an echolocation task in dolphins. Vishruta graduated with an MS in data science from the University of Delaware in 2021. As a part of her master’s thesis for this degree, she worked on using machine learning methods to evaluate remotely sensed imagery. She is currently a Ph.D. student in the Bioinformatics Data Science Program and is co-advised by Dr. Usler and Dr. Chow. She is interested in using data science techniques and image and signal processing methods to analyze various data, including fMRI and EEG data, to study fluency disorders.