The CAANLab Team
Director
Dr. Benjamin Zendel
Dr. Zendel holds a Canada Research Chair in Aging and Auditory Neuroscience, and is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Most recently, Dr. Zendel completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Université de Montréal, where he conducted research at both the Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM) and at The International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS). He earned a Ph.D. and M.A. in Psychology from the University of Toronto, while working at the Rotman Research Instituite, and earned his B.A. (hons) in Psychology from the University of Calgary.
Post-doctoral Fellow
We're searching for a new funded post doc. If you're interested, contact Dr. Zendel (bzendel@mun.ca)
Ph.D. Students
Özgen Demirkaplan
Özgen Demirkaplan is a doctoral student in Neuroscience at Memorial University. She completed her BA in Philosophy at Bilkent University and MSc in Cognitive Science at the Middle East Technical University. For her Masters she studied voice familiarity effect on auditory distance perception. Her research interests include cognitive aspects of auditory and speech perception.
Praveena Satkunarajah
Praveena is currently a PhD student in Neuroscience in Memorial University. She completed her Bachelor’s in Computer Science in Nanyang Technological University. Her interests include machine learning and computational neuroscience. She is currently using machine learning techniques to better understand how timbre is encoded in EEG signals
Christina Dove
Christina Dove is a doctoral student in Neuroscience at Memorial University Faculty of Medicine. She completed her MSc in Medicine (Neuroscience) and BSc (hons) in Psychology at Memorial. Her research interests include the neuroscience of music and its impacts on aging. At CAANLab, her current research is individual differences in how musical training creates changes in the brain that potentially can be used in socially prescribed treatments to improve age-related decline in terms of both auditory cognition and psycho-social factors.
Laura Howell
Laura Howell is a doctoral student in Linguistics at Memorial University. She completed a comprehensive paper for her doctoral program in the CAANLab, and is currently working on her PhD on the neuroscience of dialect and accent. Her research interests include: Sociolinguistics; Language Variation and Change; Dialect Contact; Newfoundland English.
Masters Students
Alicia Follett
Alicia is a Masters student in Neuroscience at Memorial University. She completed her Honours Bachelor degree in Biology at Memorial University in 2021. Her interests include genetics, aging, and auditory perception. She is currently exploring the genetics and neurophysiology of hidden hearing loss.`
Stephen Cooke
Stephen is currently a Masters student in Neuroscience at Memorial University. He completed an Honours degree in Psychology at Memorial University in 2021. He is currently exploring how aging impacts the perception of rhythm and meter in music.
Undergraduate Students
Liam Robbins
Liam is a medical student at Memorial University. His research will explore how different types of acoustic information can aid the ability to understand speech when there is background noise.
Danica Robichaud
Danica is doing her undergraduate honours degree in Psychology at Memorial University. Her research examines how the brain tracks the tonal hierarchy.
Staff
Alumni
Sarah Sauvé (2018-22; Post-doctoral Fellow, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University)
Zoha Rabie (2020-2022; Lab manager)
Emily Alexander (2017-2021; Lab manager, Undergraduate honours student)
Bethany Power (2016-2021; Medical student, Undergraduate honours student)
Emily Bolt (2015-2020; Medical student, Undergraduate honours student)
Alex Cho (2019-20; Research assistant, Composer)
Liam Foley (2018-19; Research assistant, SURA summer research student)
Dr. David Fleming (2016-18; Post-doctoral fellow, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University)
Olivier Dussault (2014-16; NSERC summer research student, Département de Psychologie, Université de Montréal)
Marianne Bissonnette (2015; Research assistant, Université de Montréal)
Giulia Castelletti (2014-15; Graduate exchange student, University of Trento)
Merwin Olthof (2014-15; Graduate exchange student, University of Amsterdam)
Camille Rivard (2013-14; Research assistant, Université de Montréal)
Charles-David Tremblay (2012-14; Honours Student, Département de Psychologie, Université de Montréal)