People

Cassie is a first-year PhD student in the Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience program. She graduated from Harvard University with a Master’s degree in Human Development and Education. Her research focuses on children’s numerical and conceptual development, particularly how children build conceptual representations, using behavioral and neuroimaging measures. Outside of academics, Cassie enjoys baking, hiking, going to the gym, and playing video games. 

Anant is a Master's student in the Computer Science program. His research centers on representation and abstraction, most recently examining whether pretrained vision models encode structure corresponding to human-defined visual concepts, and more broadly, how such representations can support generalization and reasoning. His research also includes work in probabilistic machine learning, discrete-event simulation, and causal inference. Outside of academics, he enjoys playing sports, especially basketball, along with badminton, cricket, pickleball, table tennis, and pool.

Lena graduated from UMass Amherst with a B.S. in Psychology on the Neuroscience Track. She is interested in cognitive development, specifically during ages 0-5, and utilizes her background in working with young children in her research. When she’s not in the lab or spending time with children, she enjoys reading a good book, tending to her plants, thrifting, crafting and spending time outside.