Jefferson Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute is pleased to welcome Laurie O’Neill, a new Research Assistant in the Memory and Perception Laboratory, led by Andrew Persichetti, PhD.
Laurie received her Bachelor of Arts degree in cognitive science from Muhlenberg College in May of 2022. As an undergraduate student, she completed a summer research project at Lehigh University that involved programming a game for a study investigating interracial social interactions in virtual reality. In addition, Laurie worked as an undergraduate researcher in the Department of Neuroscience at Muhlenberg College, and in this role she contributed to programming and experimental design for a research study examining embodied cognition related to hand positioning and mental rotation. During her senior year, Laurie worked on a thesis project comparing apparent cognitive processes within the slime mold P. polycephalum and in non-biological computational systems. She was particularly interested in comparing learning and problem-solving abilities in P. polycephalum to that of both Q-learning algorithms in stationary computers and trial-and-error learning methods in cognitive robots.
After graduating from Muhlenberg College, Laurie began working as a research technician in the Department of Biology at Tufts University and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Tufts University. She further honed her laboratory skills there and assisted with a wide range of tasks, including running behavioral experiments and analyzing data on the behavior of bio-machines during drug treatments and control conditions. In the fall of 2024, Laurie moved to Philadelphia and accepted a position as a research technician at the Monell Chemical Senses Center. There, she conducted behavioral experiments on olfaction in mouse models.
Laurie brings a broad portfolio of valuable skills to her new role as a research assistant at our Institute. Her experience with programming, data analysis, and behavioral research will serve her well as she begins working on new research focused on how memory and perception systems support diverse cognitive functions. She will be working with Dr. Persichetti on a project investigating the exact function of the Superior Parietal Lobe (or Superior Place Area), which has been shown to be involved with scene navigation.
Please join us in congratulating Laurie on her new position, and we look forward to working with her.