Tammy Tran, PhD
Dr. Tran is an assistant professor in the department of Psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology. She completed her B.S. from the University of Texas at Austin and her PhD from Johns Hopkins University in the laboratories of Michela Gallagher and Arnold Bakker (School of Medicine). Her postdoctoral training was under the direction of Anthony Wagner and Elizabeth Mormino (School of Medicine) at Stanford.
Tammy is broadly interested in the mechanisms that underlie memory variability across the lifespan, with a particular interest in real-world contributors to memory (e.g., spatial context, stress, attention).
Douglas Miller
Postdoctoral Fellow
Douglas is an incoming postdoctoral fellow. As PhD student with Anthony Wagner at Stanford University, he investigated how attentional states affect learning and subsequent memory strength. His work leverages a combination of behavioral, and neuroimaging and electrophysiological methods. As a postdoctoral fellow, he plans to investigate neural mechanisms of context and memory encoding using neuroimaging and virtual reality.
Liam Hart
PhD Student
Liam studies how attention and prior knowledge shape episodic memory. His work examines how attentional control influences encoding, how knowledge structures both support and bias recall, and how these relationships change with age. In the Tran Lab, he uses immersive virtual reality (iVR) and eye tracking to measure attention in real time during memory formation. In prior work, he used natural language processing to analyze how older adults recall personally significant autobiographical memories.
Ellie Heo
Master’s Student (Human-Computer Interaction)
Ellie Heo is a Master’s student in Human-Computer Interaction (Psychology Track) at Georgia Tech with a background in UX design and research. Her research focuses on the intersection of attention, perception, and memory in technology-mediated environments. She is particularly interested in how people process and make sense of complex information in everyday digital contexts, and how emerging technologies shape cognitive processes and behavior.
Jillian Meng
Master’s Student (Computer Science)
Jillian (Sijia) Meng is a Master’s student in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, specializing in Human–Computer Interaction. Her research focuses on designing interactive systems to improve human performance and everyday functioning in real-world contexts, particularly in areas such as memory, aging, and health. Prior to graduate school, she earned her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from New York University and worked as a software engineer at Microsoft.
Lauren Reed
Master’s Student (Psychology)
Lauren is a senior psychology student pursuing a BS/MS degree, with minors in the Science of Mental Health & Well-Being and Spanish. She has a strong interest in the relationship between brain and behavior and is dedicated to advancing her education and research in the field of neuropsychology.
Miri
Lab Mascot
Miri is a one year-old rescue puppy who loves people, food and other puppies. She is very eager to learn and explore all of the parks and green spaces that Atlanta has to offer. In her spare time, she likes lush green grass, pets, and banana flavored treats (in that order).
