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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 Associate 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.

Praveena Satkunarajah

Praveena is currently a PhD 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. She is currently using machine learning techniques to better understand how timbre is encoded in EEG signals 

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

Alicia Follett

Alicia is a Masters student in Neuroscience at Memorial University.  She completed her Honours Bachelor degree in Biology at Memorial University in 2021.  Her interests include genetics, aging, and auditory perception. She is currently exploring the genetics and neurophysiology of hidden hearing loss.

Stephen Cooke

Stephen is currently a Masters student in Neuroscience at Memorial University. He completed an Honours degree in Psychology at Memorial University in 2021.  He is currently exploring how aging impacts the perception of rhythm and meter in music.  

Undergraduate Students

Liam Robbins

Liam is a medical student at Memorial University.  His research will explore how different types of acoustic information can aid the ability to understand speech when there is background noise.

Staff

Zoha Rabie

Zoha is our lab manager.  She 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 Alexander (2017-2021; Lab manager, Undergraduate honours student)

Bethany Power (2016-2021; Medical student, Undergraduate honours student)

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)