ECSU Former Members

Reiko MATSUSHITA, Postdoc
E-mail: Reiko.Matsushita at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600
ORCID: 0000-0002-7081-8292

Reiko previously studied cognitive neuroscience using behavioral and neuroimaging methods. In this unit, she was working on hyperscanning EEG projects to study how two people interact with each other.

Katja SANGATI, Postdoc
E-mail: ekaterina.sangati at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600
ORCID: 0000-0002-0038-7909

 
She has a Joint PhD in Philosophy and Cognitive Science, an MA in Philosophy, and a MSc in Cognitive Science. She is interested in social interaction, language evolution, and enactive philosophy of mind. She will be working with the Enactive Torch sensory substitution interface, looking at the role of agency in perception.

Maria GOHLKE, Technician
Email: maria.gohlke at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600

Maria has a Dipl.-Ing. (Master's in Mechinal Engineering). Maria was leading the development of the experimental setup to study social sensitivity in pre-verbal infants using eye-trackers and virtual reality technology.

Alexey YUDIN, Technician
Email: alexey.yudin at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600
ORCID: 0000-0002-7999-5340

Alexey has a MSc in higher-energy physics and a background in cold fusion. He has experience working as a data scientist for 15 years, including in the stock exchange and in biophysics. In this unit he is supporting our analysis of nonlinear time series and complex systems.

Federico SANGATI, Research Assistant
Email: federico.sangati2 at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600
ORCID: 0000-0001-6088-415X

Federico has a BA in Computer Science, a M.Sc. in Logic and a Ph.D. in Humanities. He has 8 years of experience in NLP Industry. In our unit he will help use his Computer Science skill to support the various projects, while learning more about embodied approaches to language, animal communication and nonverbal interaction.

Rai SATO, Technician
Email: rai.sato at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600

Rai has a Bachelor's in Music. He has research experience with psychophysical studies on acoustics and tactile and experiment design for human-computer interaction research in the US. In this unit, he will support various projects related to perception, in terms of experimental design and implementation.

Léticia BERKATE, Technician
Email: leticia.berkate@oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600

Leticia has a Bachelor’s degree in Life Science and a Master’s degree in Integrative Biology and Physiology, specialized in cognitive neuroscience. She is taking part in the projects involving h-EEG and Eye Tracking to explore physiological and brain synchrony in humans during social interaction.

Natalia KOSHKINA, Research Assistant
Email: Natalia.Koshkina at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B656

Natalia has a Ph.D. in International Relations, MA in Political Science, and MA in History. She is interested in the issues of self-perception and self-identification in varying external environments. Natalia joined the unit to work as a Research Assistant on the Covid-19 Survey.

Yi-Shan CHENG, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: yi-shan.cheng2 at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600
Co-Supervisor: Acer Yu-Chan Chang (PhD, MS), University of Tokyo

She obtained her Bachelor's in Physics. In this unit, she is working on and studying the coordination in football team by using EEG, questionnaire and behavior data.

Christin PUTHUR, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: christin.puthur at oist.jp

Christin has a BS-MS Dual Degree in Physics. During her rotation in the Embodied Cognitive Science Unit she was investigating the movement trajectories of marine microorganisms from the perspective of random walks and embodied chaotic itinerancy.

Aditi POPHALE, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: aditi.pophale at oist.jp

She has a Master's in Wildlife Biology and Bachelor's in Neuroscience. During her rotation she was designing an experiment on observational learning in octopuses.

Keerthy MENON, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: keerthy.menon at oist.jp

She has a Master's in Physics with a specialization in Quantum Mechanics.  During her rotation she was clarifying the relationship between the latest advances in cognitive science and the role of the observer in quantum measurements.

Deviana DAVID, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: deviana.david at oist.jp

Ana has a BSc in psychology and a MSc in neuroscience. She was helping with the systematic review of active movement in perception and has an interest in sleep dependend learning.

Hend SAMNIYA, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: hend.samniya at oist.jp

Hend has a Ba in communication science and disorders and a Ms in audiology. She was working in the context of the Kicks-project messuring sensitivity to social contingency in infant-caregiver dyads using eye tracking technology.

Balashwethan CHOCKALINGAM, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: chockalingam.balashwethan at oist.jp

Balashwethan Chockalingam (Bala) has a Bachelor's in Physics and Math from the University of Chicago and is planning to venture into Neuroscience. During his first rotation, Bala was exploring the principle of self-adaptation in regards to the laws of physics by working the Ising model.

Javier Andres TEJEDA MORA, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: JavierAndres.TejedaMora at oist.jp

Javier has a BCs in Nanosciences and Nanotechnology. In the past two years, he used mass spectrometry to analyze and discover metabolites from a wide range of microorganisms. For the rotation, he was helping with the port of an evolutionary algorithm onto JuliaLang

Manisha BISWAS, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: manisha.biswas at oist.jp

She has a MSc in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology (University of Oxford), MSc in Cognitive Science (Centre for Cognitive and Brain Science, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar), and a B.A Honours in Sociology (Presidency University, Calcutta). In the unit, she was working on dual Eye-tracking to investigate the idiosyncracies of mutual gaze in face to face interaction.

David BIERBRAUER, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: david.bierbrauer at oist.jp

David has a BSc and MSc in biophysics. He was analyzing human movement time series in the context of social interaction and exploring how to extend those methods into mice models.

Alex BARANSKI, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: alexander.baranski at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600

He earned his BSc in Mathematics from the University of Chicago. During his rotation in this unit, he did mathematical analysis and computational modeling of the behavioral evolution of the nematode C. elegans.

Kensei KIKUCHI, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: kensei.kikuchi at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B656

He has a Bachelor's in Engineering (Material Science). He was studying the relationship between brain size and social capabilities during his time in this unit.

Sutashu TOMONAGA, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: sutashu.tomonaga at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B656

Sutashu has a B.Eng with a background in statistical analysis of information learning systems. He is interested in ways to understand consciousness by mapping out the mind using mathematical models. During this rotation, he was working on the Thought Reading with Meta-transitions Project.

Kokila Dilhani PERERA, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: kokila.perera at oist.jp
Location: remote

She has an MSc and BSc in Bioengineering and is interested in the neural mechanisms of learning and decision-making. During her rotation, she was working on characterizing interbrain coupling within a dyad communicating face-to-face and over video chat.

Mathieu COUILLARD, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: mathieu.couillard1 at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B656

Mathieu completed a BSc and MSc in Physics. His background is in photonics and is currently interested in quantum computing and quantum information technology. During his rotation in the ECSU, he was studying the relation between quantum mechanics and consciousness using quantum information theory.

Izabela POREBSKA, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: izabela.porebska1 at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600

Izabela has a Bachelor's degree in Neurobiology from Jagiellonian University and a Master's degree in Neurosciences from University of Bonn, Germany. She is interested in neuropsychology of child's development. During the rotation, she was trying to implement EEG to Agency in Perception project, to investigate brain entropy in active and passive movement.

Yuji KANAGAWA, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: yuji.kanagawa at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600

Yuji graduated from the University of Tokyo with BSc and MSc in system science, studying reinforcement learning. While his main research interests lie in the evolutionary origin of reward and learning, he broadly enjoys thinking about life, mind, and culture. He will help Perceptual Crossing experiments in various computational perspectives during the rotation.

Rui FUKUSHIMA, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: rui-fukushima at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600

Rui graduated from Hosei University with Bachelor's in mechanical engineering, studying robot navigation and reinforcement learning. After graduation, Rui worked on projects as a technical staff member at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), where he gradually became interested in cognitive neuroscience, especially research related to consciousness, memory and curiosity.

Terezie SEDLINSKA, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: terezie.sedlinska at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600
ORCID: 0000-0002-4768-7773

Terezie graduated from medical school and holds an M.Res. in Medical Research. She worked as a resident psychiatrist, specializing in acute psychosis patients in the inpatient setting. Her research focuses primarily on behavioral modeling of basal learning and decision-making mechanisms in humans. During her rotation in our lab, she will analyze hyper-scanning data from EEG and physiological measures in social interactions.

Dmitriy SAKHARUK, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: d.sakharuk at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600c

Dmitriy has completed his bachelor's and master's degrees in physics, officially specializing in biophysics, although his research projects were in neuroscience. He is interested in understanding how the human brain works at all levels, from systemic and behavioral to cellular and molecular. He is particularly interested in brain-computer interfaces and other methods of interacting with the brain, such as EEG, TMS, and more.

Manuel HERAS ESCRIBANO, Visiting Researcher, University of the Basque Country
E-mail: manuel.herasescribano at oist.jp

Manuel is a postdoc researcher interested in the philosophical aspects of 4E cognition, such as the relation between enaction and ecological psychology, epistemic aspects of affordances and ecological information, agency, habits, social normativity, and the evolution of cognition. 

Lorena LOBO NAVAS, Visiting Researcher,
E-mail: lorena.lobonavas at oist.jp

Lorena has a Ph.D. in Psychology and a M.Sc. in Biophysics. Lorena is interested in sensory substitution, ecological psychology, and perceptual learning. She was working on psychological studies on the role of intentions and agency in perceptual experience. 

Jamila RODRIGUES, Postdoc
E-mail: jamila.rodrigues at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B656
ORCID: 0000-0002-3113-4664

Jamila is an anthropologist who previously worked as a professional dancer and lecturer in Cape Town, South Africa. She completed a PhD in Anthropology and Sufi Islamic Embodied Ritual Practices. Her interested in embodiment, body-mind relation, selfhood and ritual practice. In this unit, she worked as a researcher for the project COVID-19 SURVEY, focusing on the narratives of people’s lived experience of social distance and lockdown during the pandemic period.

Carolina ARAGÓN, Master's student of UNAM
Email: caro.aragon at gmail.com

Caro visited the unit to complete her Master's degree in Philosophy of Science, for which she was writing a dissertation on the cognitive science of body memory. She is particularly interested in developing the concept of a nutritional body memory.

Alejandro MORALES, Master's student of UNAM
Email: alejandroe at ciencias.unam.mx

Alejandro visited the unit to complete his Master's degree in Computer Science and Engineering, for which he was writing a dissertation on self-optimization in complex social and neural networks. He is particularly interested in modeling this process in terms of the connectome of the nematode worm (C. elegans).

Itzel CADENA, Bachelor's student of UNAM
Email: itzelacadena at gmail.com

Itzel visited the unit to complete her Bachelor's degree in Psychology, for which she was writing a dissertation on the exploratory behavior of children with autism. She is particularly interested in advancing our understanding of autism from the perspective of embodied cognition and enactive cognitive science.

Ana Lucía VALENCIA, Bachelor's student of UNAM
Email: ana.valenciazam at gmail.com

Ana Lucía visited the unit to complete her Bachelor's degree in Psychology, for which she was writing a dissertation on the similarities between large-scale intra- and inter-brain neural synchrony. She is particularly interested in exploring the implications of these similarities for the science of consciousness.

Jorge Ivan CAMPOS BRAVO, Special Research Student
Email: jorge.campos at oist.jp

He has a Master's in Computer Science and Engineering. He was enrolled as a doctoral student in UNAM's postgraduate program of the same name. His doctoral thesis explores different models of artificial referential communication.

Laura Alejandra MOJICA LOPEZ, Doctoral candidate at UAM, Mexico
Email: lauraalejandra.mojicalopez at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600
ORCID: 0000-0002-2737-4032

She has a MSc in Logic and a Bachelor's in Philosophy. She was enrolled as a doctoral student in UAM's postgraduate program of social sciences and humanities. Her doctoral thesis investigates how normativity should be conceived in enactive cognitive science.

Susana RAMIREZ VIZCAYA, Doctoral Candidate at UNAM, Mexico
Email: susana.ramirez at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B656
ORCID: 0000-0001-6829-025X

She has a Master's in Cognitive Sciences and Bachelor's in Industrial and Systems Engineering. She was enrolled in UNAM's postgraduate program of philosophy of science. Her doctoral thesis investigates the relationship between habits and the self.

Kazuma TAKADA, Master's candidate at Meiji University
Email: kazuma.takada1 at oist.jp

Kazuma has a BSc in computer science and studies about Human-Computer Interaction in the Frontier Media Science Program at Meiji University as master's student. He is interested in understanding human interaction regarding Agency and Ownership and expanding perception.

Georgina M. RESENDIZ BENHUMEA, Master's candidate at UNAM, Mexico
Email: georginamontserrat.resendizbenhumea at oist.jp

She has a Bachelor's in Telecommunications, Systems and Electronics Engineering. She was enrolled in UNAM's postgraduate program of computer science and engineering. Her Master's thesis investigates social interaction in ant colonies using computational models.

Akash KULGOD, Research Intern
Email: akash.kulgod at oist.jp
Location: remote

Akash is a senior undergraduate majoring in Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley. He is fascinated by metaphor and is interested in applying it to the study of psychedelics and meditation to decipher the nature of self-consciousness. In the unit, he was working with Jamila on the COVID-19 project and with Susana on her thesis exploring the relationship between habits and the self.

Takahiro WAKISAKA, Research Intern
E-mail: Takahiro.Wakisaka at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600

Takahiro was a third-year undergraduate student majoring in medicine. His interest is the scientific research of consciousness, especially in the theoretical approach. In the unit, he was investigating theoretical explanations of inter-brain synchronization and its consciousness state under social interaction experiments.

Cortney CORTES, Research Intern
Email: Cortney.Cortes at oist.jp
Location: B600

Cortney was in her last year of undergraduate studies at Arizona State University majoring in Biology with an emphasis in Medicine. She is interested in learning more about how people interact on a cognitive level and how it can apply to the science side of medicine.

Juan ESQUIVIAS FARIAS, Research Intern
Email: Juan.EsquiviasFarias at oist.jp
Location: remote

Juan is a Cognitive Psychologist whose main interests are social interaction and social cognition from an embodied and experimental perspective. He has experience with hyperscanning set-ups during joint action tasks. For him it is specially appealing to explore the basic conditions for the emergence of cognitive processes related to Social Interaction and inter-brain synchronization patterns, as well as the design of effective forms to separate task-induced inter-brain synchronization and socially induced, genuine inter-brain synchrony.

Juliana DE DEUS, Research Intern
Email: Juliana.DeDeus at oist.jp
Location: remote
ORCID: 0000-0002-9120-314X

Juliana has a BS in Clinical Psychology and a MS in Behavioural Science. She is interested in healthy aging and dementia. During her internship she was working mainly in the Thought Reading with Meta-transitions Project.

Christy SHAO, Research Intern
Email: xueying.shao at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600

Christy was a fourth-year Cognitive Science major student with a minor in Interdisciplinary Life Sciences. She is interested in the intersection between art and neuroscience, neuroaesthetics and interactive experiences. During her internship, she will be working on the Thought Meter project. She was running EEG experiments to study brain activities during the movie-viewing task and while listening to Bach music.

Kanon KOBAYASHI, Research Intern
Email: kanon.kobayashi at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600

Kanon was a sixth-year medical student. She has developed particular interest in neuromusicology, which comes from her background as a violin player. She is interested in neural oscillations and interaction between bodily movements and perception. In this unit, she was working on Perceptual Crossing experiments.

Yoonsang LEE, Research Intern
Email: yoonsang.lee at oist.jp
Location: remote

Yoonsang, a.k.a. Eunice has a BA in Psychology and a MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience. She’s interested in the dynamics between low-level perception and high-level cognition. In this unit, she is engaged in the systemic review of literature on active perception and related data analyses.

Morgan MONTOYA, Research Intern
Email: morgan.montoya at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600

Morgan Montoya has a Bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Behavioral Neuroscience from the University of California, San Diego. Currently, he is interested in translational medicine targeting neuropsychiatric disorders. During his time here he will be conducting qualitative analysis on the COVID-19 survey and enjoying all types of tea and coffee.

Francesca FOTIA, Research intern
Email: francesca.fotia at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B656

Francesca has a PhD in Neuropsychology, a MSc in Psychology, and a BA in Communication Science. Additionally, she has trained in Clinical psychology in a Mental Health Service Unit of the Italian National Health System. She is interested in a research approach that favours the integration of phenomenology and neuroscience as a way of increasing the possibility of understanding and treating psychiatric illnesses. In this unit, she will investigate temporality and affectivity as manifest in schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

John SYKES, Research intern
Email: johnjames.sykes at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600

John holds a BA in Philosophy & History, a MSc in Psychology, a M.Res in Philosophy and is currently completing a PhD in Philosophy, Science, Cognition and Semiotics. His MA research investigated the ways in which research findings from phenomenological philosophy and cognitive neuroscience can be productively integrated within single research programmes. His PhD research attempts to apply those findings to the study of embodied spatiality, particularly in relation to how objects and other people shape spatial cognition and its neural correlates. In the unit, he assists in projects pertaining to neurophenomenology and temporality and affectivity in schizophrenia. He is also interested in the philosophy of science, technology and biology.

Kathryn BODY, Research intern
Email: kathrynfiona.body at oist.jp
Location: To be decided

Kathryn is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy, at the University of Bristol. She has an MA in Medical Ethics and Law from King’s College London and BA in Philosophy from the University of Kent. Her current research project combines perspectives from phenomenology and social anthropology to qualitatively analyse data collected for the COVID-19 survey project. During her time at the unit, she will continue to work with this data and help facilitate a workshop discussing the project findings.

Mats-Helge STROMBERG, Research intern
Email: mats-stromberg at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600c

Mats has a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a minor in International Business Administration. During his internship, he will be assisting Katja in working with the Enactive Torch sensory substitution interface and looking at the role of agency in perception.

Aisha BELHADI, Research intern
Email: aisha.belhadi at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600c

Aisha is a psychiatrist with experience in adult and child psychiatry. She has an Msc in biological neuroscience. She is interested in temporality, and how it relates to mental health, developmental processes, spatial perception, and broader socio-cultural interactions. During her internship, she will be learning about perceptual crossing experiments, and looking into temporality from different theoretical perspectives.

Kenzo NABEYA, Research intern
Email: kenzo.nabeya at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600c

Kenzo, with B.Sc and M.Sc degrees in Electrical Engineering, specializes in systems theory, control engineering, and has a strong interest in the robustness of data-driven state estimation and human behavior characterization. Kenzo spent two years in the corporate research sector in the automotive industry, particularly in human behavior modeling. At ECSU, Kenzo actively contributes to the perceptual crossing experiment.

Samira TAVASSOLI, Visiting Student
Email: Samira.Tavassoli at oist.jp
Location: Lab2 B600

Sammy is an undergraduate student concentrating in an interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and literature. She is most interested in studying the interactions between perception and cognition. In the unit, she will be working with Katja to investigate how sensory substitution interfaces like the Enactive Torch may become integrated into mental body models as extensions of the body.

Hideyuki YOSHIMURA, OIST Doctoral Candidate
Email: hideyuki.yoshimura at oist.jp

Hideyuki has a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Engineering. As a gap program student, in this unit Hideyuki was be programming the LEGO Mindstorms robot to perform needed tasks.