Rupesh Chillale, Ph.D.
Assistant Research Scientist, Project 1

Rupesh Chillale's research interests include neural mechanisms of perception and attention in the auditory system. He is interested in studying how sensory and perceptual features are processed along the hierarchical cortical pathway from auditory to the frontal cortex. His research focuses on a) Neural mechanisms involved in auditory categorization, b) How auditory systems group sounds into perceptual elements such as speech or melody, b) Neural mechanisms underlying goal-directed behaviors (how choice, decisions emerge from perceptually meaningful sounds). Rupesh uses diverse methods involving electrophysiology (extracelluar recordings, ECoG) from behaving ferrets, computation techniques (machine learning) and mathematical models to address the research questions. 

Michael Johns, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher, Project 3

Dr. Michael (Mike) Johns is a postdoctoral associate at the Institute for Systems Research, co-advised by Dr. Jonathan Simon and Dr. Stefanie Kuchinsky. He received his B.A. in Linguistics and Spanish from the University of Florida, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish and Language Science from the Pennsylvania State University. His research examines how mental effort influences language processing and production, how individuals leverage their experience to deal with this effort when it arises, and what this tells us about the underlying linguistic representations in the mind and brain.

Ali Ibrahim Mohammed
Postdoctoral Fellow, Project 1

Ali is currently a post-doctoral researcher in Institute for Systems Research (ISR). He joined Dr. Shamma's lab in January 2018.