Z-LAB



September, 2024:

Congratulations to our graduate student, Kelly Hiersche, for earning the title of PhD candidate!

June, 2024:

Congratulations to our graduate students, Kelly and Elana,for the publication of their paper "The language network is selective and distinct from other cognition in both function and connectivity in early childhood" in Human Brain Mapping!


Congratulations to our graduate student, Dr. Jin Li, for successfully defending her PhD dissertation!


May, 2024:

Our undergraduate research assistant, Leah DiRubio, has won the H. Dean and Susan Regis Gibson Research Award for her project, The Development and Behavioral Contributions of Laterality of the Visual Word Form Area!


Congratulations to our undergraduate RA, Mei Jira, on her summer funding through the CCBS Undergraduate Summer Institute!


March, 2024:

Congratulations to our undergraduate research assistant Divya Gopal for winning 2nd place at the Denman Undergraduate Research Forum!


January, 2024:

Congratulations to our research assistant, Nii Aryeetey for winning the CBI travel award!


December, 2023:

Congratulations to our undergraduate research assistants, Ajuna, Leah, Divya, and Razan for presenting posters at the annual CCBBI research day!


Special Congratulations to our undergrad Ajuna Mwesigye on winning best poster!


November, 2023:

Congratulations to Kelly on winning 1st place in the Autumn 2023 Graduate Student Research Forum!


August, 2023:

Congratulations to Dr. Fiona Molloy on defending her dissertation!


Congratulations to Alexander on presenting his poster on the development of language!


May, 2023:

Congratulations to Dr. Heather Hansen on her graduation and robing!


Our lab spent the day sharing information on the brain at the COSi Big Science Celebration


April, 2023:

Congratulations to our undergrad Ajuna Mwesigye on his Undergraduate Research Award!


Congratulations to our undergrad Ajuna Mwesigye on his acceptance into the 2023 ADNIR Scholar Award program with CCBBI!


Congratulations to our undergrad Leah DiRubio on her summer funding from the URAP program!


March, 2023:

Congratulations to our graduate student Kelly Hiersche on her receipt of the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship! She will receive 5 years of inclusive funding for her research.


Congratulations to our undergrad Emily Yu on her acceptance into the 2023 Biomedical Engineering Summer Internship Program with the National Institute of Health!


Congratulations to Kelly Hiersche for winning the CBI travel award and VSS travel award!


Congratulations to Jin Li for coming in second for her presentation at the Hayes Forum!

February, 2023:

Congratulations to Heather Hansen on the successful defense of her dissertation! Here's to you Dr. Hansen!


January, 2023:

Congratulations to Jin Li on her new publication titled "Intact reading ability despite lacking a canonical visual word form area in an individual born without the left superior temporal lobe".


December, 2022:

Congratulations to Fiona Molloy who won the Best Oral Presentation award at CCBBI Research Day on December 8th. Her presentation focused on using computational methods to define functional regions of interest.


April, 2022:

Heather Hansen wins Student Research Grant

Graduate student Heather Hansen won the soQuiet Misophonia Student Research Grant for her work in studying Misophonia. Contratulations Heather!


Dr. Saygin and Fiona featured in OSU News!

Dr. Saygin and graduate student Fiona Molloy were featured on OSU News for their infant brain research! Check out the story here: here.


March, 2022:

Students win various accolades!

One of our undergraduate students, Emily Yu, has been accepted into the 2022 Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program. Congratulations Emily!!


Our graduate student Kelly Hiersche has won two travel awards, the Graduate Student Conference Presentation Award and the CBI travel award. Congratulations Kelly!!


Our graduate student Elana Schettini has won the Ray Travel Award from the Council of Graduate Students. Congratulations Elana!!


December, 2021:

Heather Hansen wins Presidential Fellowship award

One of our graduate students, Heather Hansen, has won the Presidential Fellowship from the Graduate School for her dissertation! Congratulations Heather!!


November, 2021:

Undergraduate STEP projects

Luke Wisniewski and Yasemin Gokcen presented their research projects for the STEP program! See their presentations below! here.


May, 2021:

Yasemin Gokcen wins covetted spot

Yasemin has been announced as one of ten students out of 75 applicants to be accepted to CCBBI's summer coding course! Congratulations!


Emily Yu wins summer research award

One of our undergraduate students, Emily Yu, has won a scholarship for summer research! Congratulations!!


April, 2021:

Heather Hansen wins two awards

Heather Hansen won second place at the Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum! She has also been awarded a teaching award! Congratulations Heather!!!


March, 2021:

Fiona Molloy is awarded

Fiona Molloy is awarded the H. Dean and Susan Regis Gibson Research Award to help conduct her neuroimaging research! She also receives a VSS 2021 travel award! Great job Fiona!!! Many congrats!!


January, 2021:

Coolest Science Story of 2020!

Human brains pre-wired for words is coolest science story of 2020 You can read the story here.


October, 2020:

Jins's paper is on the news! Humans are born with brains ‘prewired’ to see words You can take a look at her work here.


Heather's paper is on the news! Newborn emotional brain You can take a look at her work here.


September, 2020:

Yasemin receives one of two ADNiRs scholarships!


October, 2019

A huge congrats to Athena and Jin as they head to the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting! Athena will be presenting a poster on the hippocampal network in neonates, and Jin will be giving a talk on the innate connectivity of the VWFA. See some pictures of their time at SFN here, and email us if you would like to hear more information about their work!


May, 2019

We had a great time celebrating science and sharing the work that goes on in our lab at the COSI Science Festival! See some pictures of our booth here, and email us if you would like to participate or hear more information about our research!


April, 2019

Carver Nabb is a recipient of the College of Art's and Science's Undergraduate Research Award for his project, Predicting individual reading ability based on anatomical and functional neural connectivity. Great job Carver!


February, 2019

Congratulations to three of our lab members - Athena Howell, Jin Li, and Carver Nabb - for their hard work! Athena and Jin have been awarded a research grant from the H. Dean and Susan Regis Gibson Research Award, and Carver received a 3rd place award at the Denman Undergraduate Research Forum!


October, 2018

Some of our lab members were able to present their work at the Ohio Supercomputer Center Center Statewide Users Group (SUG) meeting in Columbus! Congrats to everyone who was able to present a poster, and additionally to Heather Hansen for her second place award! Go to our "Gallery" page or click here to see some pictures.


July, 2018

Congratulations to Dr. Saygin and other colleagues at The Ohio State University on their Chronic Brain Injury (CBI) Pilot Award Program! The title of the pilot study is "Longitudinal Assessment of Cognition and Eye-related Symptoms in Youth Hockey Players: The LACES Youth Hockey Study." This study will be investigating cognitive and pupil funtion of youth contact hockey players, before and after their season.


May, 2018

Heather Hansen presented her research on visual search strategies at the Vision Sciences Society conference in St. Pete Beach, Florida. Heather worked on this project with her other advisor, Dr. Andy Leber. You can take a look at her poster here.

We had a great time at WestFest, a sustainability and outreach festival on the west campus of Ohio State University, displaying our research with fun brain demos and activities for the kids! If you weren't able to stop by, visit some pictures of our booth! You can also visit the web information page for the WestFest event here!


April, 2018

Dr. Saygin and Heather Hansen were invited to present their research at the Emory Univeristy Mechanisms of Learning forum in Atlanta, Georgia. Check out Heather's research poster here!


February, 2018

Dr. Saygin is a recipient of the 2018 Sloan Fellowship, from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, honoring early-career scholars whose research is among some of the brightest scientific minds today. A big congratulations to Dr. Saygin for this great accomplishment!

Congratulations to one of our lab members, Heather Hansen, on being awarded a research grant from the H. Dean and Susan Regis Gibson Research Award for her project, Neural Mechanisms of Misophonia! Great work Heather!


October, 2017

Dr. Saygin and colleagues have published a new paper in PNAS showing causal evidence for face and color processing in the human brain! Read more about it here!