Director

Prof. Bob McMurray is the director of the MACLab. He is in his third year teaching at the University of Iowa. Before arriving here, he was involved with research on the development of speech and visual categories in infancy, and on online spoken word recognition in adults, with Richard Aslin and Michael Tanenhaus. In addition, he has done significant work extending eye-movements as a paradigm for studying both infant and adult perception and cognition.

He hopes to continue this reseach in the next few years, and also extend it to new domains: computational modeling, speech disorders and impairments, and visual and nonspeech auditory categories.

Website
Email: bob-mcmurray at uiowa.edu

Post-Doc

Dr. Shannon Ross-Sheehy

Email: shannon-ross at uiowa.edu

Lab Manager

William Dan McEchron is a former MACLab alumni who has returned to accept the responsiblities of Lab Manager. He recently recieved his B.A. in Psychology and plans on going to graduate school in the future. Originally from Bettendorf, Iowa; he enjoys music, film, cooking, long walks on the beach and synthesising words in Klattworks.

Email: william-mcechron at uiowa.edu

Graduate Students

Joe Toscano is a third-year grad student in the MACLab. His research uses computational models to understand how humans learn the categories of speech sounds used in languages. Prior to coming to Iowa, he was an undergrad at the University of Rochester. He is originally from Greece, NY, a town north of the city of Rochester. In his spare time, he is a computer hobbyist, amateur astronomer, and an emergency medical technician.

Website
Email: joseph-toscano at uiowa.edu

Cheyenne Munson is the other third-year graduate student in the MACLab. Before coming to Iowa she was a psychology major at Oberlin College. Her research there focused on children's use of pragmatic cues in reference resolution. Now a transplant to the midwest, Cheyenne is originally from Fort Bragg, California. When she's not in the lab she enjoys swimming laps, swing dancing, and knitting.

Website
Email: cheyenne-munson at uiowa.edu

Marcus Galle is a second year graduate student in developmental science. He is originally from Texas, having studied psychology at Texas A&M University. He enjoys playing guitar, running, tennis, computers, photography, and winter activities involving that extremely foreign substance snow.

Website
Email: marcus-galle at uiowa.edu

Wish you were listed here? Apply to be a psychology graduate student at the University of Iowa today.

Adjunct Graduate Students

Vicki Samelson is a second-year doctoral student in Speech and Language Pathology. She worked as a practicing speech/language pathologist before coming to Iowa. Her current research interests include:
-Comprehension of complex sentences in specific language impairment (SLI)
-Lexical access, sentence comprehension and discourse comprehension in the normal, SLI and hearing impaired (HI) populations
-Academic outcomes (specifically reading comprehension) in the school-aged SLI and HI populations

Email: vicki-samelson at uiowa.edu

Gwyneth Rost is a doctoral student in Speech Pathology at The University of Iowa. She is an alumna of Grinnell College and has earned master's degrees in Linguistics and in Speech Pathology from the University of Louisville. Her research at both the Word Learning Lab (in the department of Speech Pathology and Audiology) and in the MACLab focuses on lexical development in infants and children.

website
Email: gwyneth-rost at uiowa.edu

Stephanie Packard is a graduate student in Prof. Prahlad Gupta's lab.

Email: stephanie-packard at uiowa.edu

Undergraduates

Jennifer Merickel is an undergraduate senior majoring in German, Linguistics, and Medieval Studies. Most of her coursework is geared toward studying language from different angles - particuarly speech perception. Throughout college she has indulged a fancy for learning dead langauges and reading norse sagas. In her free time she goes Camping/Backpacking as much as possible and practices Hapkido and the Oboe. She also greatly enjoys cooking and walking her dog.

Email: jennifer-merickel at uiowa.edu

Lea Greiner

Email: lea-greiner at uiowa.edu

Chad Cysewski

Email: chad-cysewski at uiowa.edu

Megan Mathews is an undergraduate senior working towards a BA in psychology and BFA in Intermedia Art. Her research interests include language development, visual perception, motion, attention & art. In her spare time she enjoys singing, sewing, documentary films, reading, and dancing the tango.

Email: megan-mathews at uiowa.edu

Mary Gannon

Email: mary-gannon at uiowa.edu

Kelli Kean

Email: kelli-kean at uiowa.edu

Rachel Travis

Email: rachel-travis at uiowa.edu

Margot Schneider is an undergraduate studying genetics in the Biological Sciences Department with a dance minor. Her interests include speech pathology, swimming, watching chick flicks, hanging out with friends, and reading mystery/romance novels.

Email: margot-schneider at uiowa.edu