People

Director

Liberty Hamilton, Ph.D.

Dr. Hamilton completed her Ph.D. in neuroscience at UC Berkeley and her postdoc at UCSF. Her research examines how speech is represented in the auditory cortex and changes across development, using intracranial EEG in patients and EEG in healthy populations. She is an Associate Professor at UT Austin with joint appointments in SLHS and Neurology, and an adjunct assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine. She is affiliated with UT's Institute for Neuroscience, the CARE Initiative, and the Center for Perceptual Systems.

Postdoctoral Fellows

Diego Mac-Auliffe, M.D., Ph.D.

Diego's research focuses on closed-loop BCI systems and high-level cognitive neuroscience using invasive EEG. He completed his PhD in France on multitasking and attention and is a postdoc in ECE, Moody College, and Neurology.

Gerick Lee, Ph.D.

Gerick Lee holds a PhD in Neural Science from New York University. His work broadly focuses on sensory encoding and information representation in the nervous system. He uses behavioral and neurophysiological methods to measure how the brain represents information, and how those representations change during development. His Master’s, with Reto Huber, focused on the effects of both age and sleep state on EEG signals, measured from (human) adults and children. His PhD, with Tony Movshon and Lynne Kiorpes, focused on the pursuit of a neural correlate of behavioral development in macaque monkeys: he found that function in visual cortex matures before behavior. Spoken language represents a bridge linking sensory input to motor output. For his postdoc with Liberty Hamilton, Gerick hopes to leverage the properties of language to chase a neural correlate of development in areas which may lie downstream of sensory cortex. He loves to hike, ski and yap, often with a bad Australian accent.

Graduate Students

Elise Rickert

Elise is a 4th year AuD student interested in neuroplasticity of the auditory cortex and speech perception, with a background in psychology and disability studies.

Rajvi Agravat

Rajvi is a 3rd year PhD student studying auditory attention in epilepsy. She previously worked on vocal motor cortex in mice at Rockefeller University.

Arpan Patel

Arpan is an MD/MSE candidate researching speech decoding models in the lab for his biomedical engineering thesis.

Leah (Xin) Du

Leah is a first-year doctoral student with a background in computer science and psychology, interested in bilingualism and imagined speech via ECoG.

Research Coordinators

Alyssa Field, M.Ed.

Alyssa manages sEEG neuroimaging and lab operations. She holds degrees in Linguistics and Secondary Education, with interests in digital humanities and sociolinguistics.

Sandy Georges

Sandy recruits patients at Texas Children's Hospital and collects iEEG data. She has a background in neuroscience and pharmacology and is interested in neurology and psychiatry.

Jacob Leisawitz

Jacob recently graduated from Syracuse University and works at Texas Children’s Hospital studying auditory mechanisms in epilepsy patients.

Capstone Students

Erica McVey

Erica is a 4th year AuD student whose capstone project explores EEG speech-in-noise encoding in ASL interpreters, linking auditory and cross-modal plasticity.

Rotating Students

Yao Chen

Yao is a 3rd year PhD student rotating in the lab, analyzing iEEG during speech and exploring non-native speech perception and autism interventions.

Lauren Ralston, Au.D.

Lauren is a PhD student focused on EEG-based sound encoding and brain reorganization in tinnitus and hearing loss. She manages the Central Sensory Processes Lab.

Undergraduate Researchers

Lauren Hilder

Lauren is a sophomore majoring in Medical Laboratory Sciences, driven by personal connections to speech and hearing research.

Giselle Pedraza

Giselle is a Music and Neuroscience major exploring auditory cognition and sound processing, with a love for piano, music, and dancing.

Anisha Cheena Sait

Anisha is a Neuroscience and Sociology major interested in speech processing, neurodegeneration, and computational approaches to the brain.

Indrani Basu

Indrani is a triple major in WGS, Neuroscience, and Plan II. She enjoys yoga, ceramics, and UT Microfarm and plans to study pediatric neurology.

Amara Vincent-Nsobundu

Amara is a Public Health major with interests in language processing and data science. She also enjoys reading and applied statistics.

Fouad Tawil

Fouad is a Computational Biology major focused on speech, language, and neural modeling. He also leads a nonprofit and enjoys paddle boarding.

Alumni

Maansi Desai, Ph.D.

Maansi studies auditory attention and naturalistic speech encoding using EEG and iEEG. She completed her PhD at UT Austin and is now a part-time postdoc in the lab.

G. Lynn Kurteff, Ph.D.

Lynn investigates self-generated versus external auditory feedback using EEG and sEEG. Their research also explores error detection and correction systems in the brain.

Aneri Shah

As a part of this lab, Aneri learned to run EEG data collection sessions with adult participants and gained a deeper understanding of the EEG methodology and preprocessing.

Lydia Su

Completed her AuD research capstone on speech in noise difficulties using audiometry, ABR, and EEG.

Gabby Foox

Research Coordinator at Texas Children's Hospital. Now at Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine (2024).

Therese Ancheta

Shadowed at Texas Children's Hospital during Summer 2023.

Alex Foox

Shadowed at Texas Children's Hospital in Summer 2023. Now an undergraduate at UT Austin.

Saman Asghar

Contributed to pediatric data collection at Texas Children’s Hospital. Now pursuing a DO at UIW School of Osteopathic Medicine.

Malinda Mullet

Worked on sEEG data preprocessing (2021–2023). Now in AuD externship at Carle ECHO/CAOS.

Katherine Huang

Created pediatric-friendly research materials in Fall 2022.

Beth Oldenburg

Assisted EEG data collection using movie trailers (Fall 2022). Plans to pursue a Master of Communication Disorders.

Anokhi Shah

Assisted EEG data collection using movie trailers (Fall 2022). Graduated with a B.S. in Neuroscience and minor in Journalism.

Jacob Cheek

Worked on virtual classroom fatigue measures (2021–2023). Currently in AuD externship at American Family Children’s Hospital in Madison, WI.

Donise Tran

Undergrad researcher (2019–2020). Now in graduate school for SLP. Interested in Deaf community speech education.

Sahar Hashemgeloogerdi, Ph.D.

Ph.D. in ECE from University of Rochester. Studied BCI and acoustic signal processing in Hamilton Lab.

Tasha Anslyn

Undergrad researcher on EEG of speech production/perception. Interested in linguistics and speech disorders.

Amanda Martinez

CSD graduate (2021). Interested in brain and language processing in children and adults. Plans to become an SLP.

Chris Truong

Assisted with EEG project on speech perception vs. production.

Claire Huber

Completed undergraduate studies in Linguistics and Computer Science (2019). Worked on speech perception/production project.

Valerie Rae Mercado

Graduated with BA in English, Linguistics, and Japanese. Now a tutor and linguistics grad school hopeful.

Brittany Hoang

SLHS graduate (2021). Now working as an SLPA and planning to pursue graduate studies in SLP.

Nicole Currens

Undergrad researcher (2019–2020). Worked on EEG for naturalistic speech. Majored in Linguistics and CS.

Nick Arreguy

Independent study on EEG artifact rejection using ICA (Spring 2020).

Rachel Sorrells

Independent research through UT Neuroscience and Moody IE Program (2019–2020).

Jade Holder

Undergrad researcher (2018–2020). Started Master's in Communication Disorders at UT Dallas (Fall 2020).

Ian Griffith

Research Assistant (2018–2020). Worked on neural networks for pitch and phonology. Now a PhD student at Harvard/MIT.

Paranjaya Pokharel

Undergrad research volunteer (Summer–Fall 2019).

Natalie Miller

Summer 2019 volunteer. Now pursuing a PhD in Musicology at Princeton.

Greta Lowery, MA, CCC-SLP

Masters student (2017–2019). Studied simultaneous speech and music perception via EEG. Now a pediatric SLP, entering PhD program in 2024.

Cassandra Villarreal

Undergrad volunteer (2018–2019). Now in graduate school at University of Washington for Medical SLP.

Nat Clark

Undergrad volunteer (2018–2019). Graduated from CSD at UT Austin, now in MS-SLP program at TWU.

Stephanie Shields

Rotation student (2019). Now in the Alex Huk Lab (UT Neuroscience).

Noora Raad

Research volunteer (2017–2018).

Shun Kobayashi

Rotation student (2018). Now in the Eyal Seidemann Lab (UT Center for Perceptual Systems).