Lab Research is funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
Dr. Daniel Smilek
Professor
Dan's research focuses on understanding how attention and perception operate in everyday situations. This is addressed by using two distinct and complementary approaches. The first approach involves using standard laboratory tasks to uncover the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie attention and perception. The second approach involves observing and describing how attention and perception operate as individuals engage in purposeful activities in their natural environments.
Adrian Safati
Graduate Student
Adrian is interested in how stress and a lack of sleep can shift important dynamics in attention and mind wandering behaviours. He is also interested in how people transition to and from flow states in classroom settings and while using electronic devices.
Zion Leatham
Graduate Student
Zion's broad research interests concern the factors that elicit mindless engagement. His master's thesis will examine the influence of positive friction on mindless engagement in social media and online platforms. Outside of academia, Zion has aswell worked on video-image classifier systems, for Diversity & Inclusion efforts. He is always learning from others' perspectives, so don't hesitate to reach out if you want to chat!
Bruno Korst
Graduate Student
Bruno Korst is interested in understanding how high-performing practitioners learn, apply and adapt their practical skills in their practice, and how professional training programmes can be improved to motivate high-performance. Bruno holds a professional designation and a graduate degree in engineering, and has been responsible for the design and delivery of practical training in Electrical Engineering for the last 17 years. He has received a few awards in leadership and innovation in laboratory instruction.
Alyssa Smith
Graduate Student
Alyssa is interested in how different physiological factors (e.g., medication use, hormones) are related to the everyday experience of attention. Her research has also examined individual differences in cognition, attention during lectures, information search behaviours, media multitasking, and flow.
Email Alyssa: alyssa.smith@uwaterloo.ca
Emilie Caron
Graduate Student
Emilie's research focuses on exploring individual differences and factors that influence levels of attention. The primary goal of her research is to ultimately find ways to improve the maintenance of attention.
Tyler Kruger
Graduate Student
Tyler is interested in the everyday experience of attentional states such as mind-wandering and flow. More specifically, he is interested in how different components of healthy living relate to different facets of attention.
Allison Drody
Graduate Student
Allison’s research interests concern attention and methodological issues related to the study of attention. Some of her recent work has focused on topics such as boredom, mind-wandering and media multitasking.
Email Allison: acdrody@uwaterloo.ca
Samantha Ayers-Glassey
Graduate Student
Samantha is interested in studying inattention, mind wandering, and flow, as well as individual differences and the relation between female reproductive hormone fluctuations and cognition.
Dr. Effie Pereira
Postdoctoral Fellow
Effie's research focuses on how attention and mind wandering fluctuate in our daily lives. In particular, her work looks at the temporal nature of attention and mind wandering as it ebbs and flows over time to distinguish between trait and state level differences across tasks and contexts. Outside of academia, she's a statistics nerd and an avid baseball fan, and is usually more than happy to chat for hours about either.
Dr. Martin Lochner
Post Doctoral Fellow
Martin’s current research focuses on developing techniques for measuring and classifying cognitive states, using psychophysiological techniques such as GSR and Pupillometry, for use in Critical Task Environments including road, rail, maritime, and health applications. He developed the ‘Automation, Trust and Workload’ collaborative research project with CSIRO, Australia, and the University of Tasmania, and collaborates with Canadian and Australian partners in this emerging research domain.
Lydia Hicks
Former Graduate Student
Lydia is broadly interested in the factors that diminish or improve our attention. Her master’s thesis examined the replicability and generalizability of foundational research in the environmental psychology literature.
Dr. Jeremy Marty-Dugas
Former Graduate Student
Jeremy is interested in the way people experience the spectrum of attentional states, from mindlessness to deep concentration, focusing mainly on mind-wandering and the experience of flow.
Dr. Brandon Ralph
Post Doctoral Fellow
Brandon has conducted research in the areas of vigilance, mind wandering, learning in the classroom, and media multitasking.
Email Brandon: bcwralph@uwaterloo.ca
Dr. Kristin Wilson
Postdoctoral Fellow
Kristin is a post doctoral fellow in the Vision and Attention Lab and Dr. Evan Risko’s Cognition and Natural Behaviour Lab. Broadly speaking Kristin is interested in how attention, motivation and metacognition operate in various learning environments. She is presently exploring how different modes of presenting lecture material online (e.g., video, audio, text, lecture speed, etc.,) impact attention, mind wandering, metacognition, and learning outcomes in online learners.
Dr. Noah Forrin
Former Graduate Student / Former Postdoctoral Fellow
Noah completed his PhD under joint supervision of Dr. Smilek and Dr. MacLeod. Noah's dissertation examined mind wandering while reading text, focusing primarily on the relation between text difficulty, text interest and mind wandering. Noah is currently a Post Doctoral Fellow at McMaster University.
Dr. Paul Seli
Former Graduate Student
Dr. Paul Seli received his PhD from the University of Waterloo (under Dr. Smilek's supervision) in July 2015. For his outstanding dissertation and graduate career, Paul received the coveted Governor General's Gold Medal. Paul was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, working under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Schacter and funded by an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship. Paul is currently an Assistant Professor at Duke University, and his research focuses on mind wandering and attention lapses.
Email Paul: pseli@uwaterloo.ca
Dr. Jonathan Carriere
Former Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Carriere completed his PhD at the University of Waterloo, and then after a brief stint at Research in Motion, came back to complete a postdoctoral fellowship. Dr. Carriere is now a Assistant Professor at Bishop's University. He has conducted research on a variety of topics including synesthesia, mind-wandering and attentional errors.
Email Jon: jon@theoptia.com
Dr. David Thomson
Former Postdoctoral Research Associate
Dr.Thomson came to the University of Waterloo as a postdoctoral fellow after completing his PhD at McMaster University under the supervision of Dr. Bruce Milliken. After some time at UW, Dr. Thomson garnered the coveted Banting Fellowship. Dr. Thomson is now working as a research consultant for BEWorks.
Dr. Grayden Solman
Former Gradute Student
Grayden Solman received his PhD in June 2012 and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of British Columbia under the supervision of Dr. Alan Kingstone. Grayden is now an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Grayden's work focuses on understanding visual exploration as it occurs under naturalistic conditions. For an informative video view Grayden's talk from a 2012 interview on the Daily Planet.