Director

Dr. Benjamin Zendel

Dr. Zendel holds a Canada Research Chair in Aging and Auditory Neuroscience, is the Chair of Research for the Aging Research Centre - Newfoundland and Labrador, and is an Assistant Professor in Community Health 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

Dr. Sarah Sauvé

Dr. Sauve joined the lab in September 2018.  She completed her Ph.D. at Queen Mary University of London in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science using prediction-based modelling to explore musical auditory scene analysis.  Dr. Sauve's research interests include auditory scene analysis, timbre perception, musical expectation and the effects of musical training and attention on perception.  At CAANLab, her primary research programme applies music perception research to older listeners, combining behavioural and computational methods with neuroscience to replicate and extend existing research in music perception. 

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.

Jennifer Beynon-Martinec

Jennifer Beynon-Martinec is  a doctoral candidate in Interdisciplinary Studies in Music, Medicine and Education at Memorial University. She has been a clinician, adjudicator, choral conductor and vocal pedagogue for over fifteen years in both Canada and Europe. Recently, she was awarded the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, from the  Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for her PhD work. 

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

Praveena Satkunarajah

Praveena is currently a Master’s 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. 

Undergraduate Students

Stephen Cooke

Stephen is currently completing an honours degree in behavioural neuroscience at Memorial University. He is working in the CAANLab to complete his honours project that focuses on the influence of pitch and timing cues on the perception of rhythm and meter.

Bethany Power

Bethany completed an honours degree in psychology and is currently a medical student at Memorial University. She completed her honours thesis in the CAANLab and  was awarded an undergraduate summer research scholarship, for her project examining the impact of dialect on speech-in-noise perception.

Staff

Emily Alexander

Emily completed her honours thesis in the CAANlab in May 2018, and was an NSERC summer student in the summer of 2018.  In 2019 she completed a Masters degreee in Psychology from the University of Toronto. Emily has interests in both audoitory perception and in mental health, and has completed projects examining how music training and clinical depression impact auditory perception.  In November 2019 she retruned to CAANLab as our lab manager.

Zoha Rabie

Zoha has a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and masters in Human Genetics, and she is currently studying for a graduate diploma in clinical epidemiology from the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial. She is very passionate about science and medicine, and love being a researcher. Zoha has worked in human genetics, bio-medicine and clinical epidemiology.  She is a mom of two, loves animals and has two husky cross dogs and two cats. In her spare time Zoha paints, swims, and volunteers at the Kids Help Phone and the Provincial Medical Genetics Centre. Zoha is using her background in human genetics to help understand how genetics may influence susceptibility to noise exposure. 

Alumni

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)