The LUMeN Lab will be considering applications this cycle for graduate student enrollment in Fall 2024!
Prospective students are strongly encouraged to carefully review the lab website and recent publications on which Dr. Cohen is first, second, or last author prior to applying to gauge potential fit. Potential students should follow application instructions provided by the Department of Psychology and Laney Graduate School (learn more about a need-based waiver of application fees to Laney Graduate School here). Due to the number of applicants, individual conversations with prospective students generally do not occur until after applications are submitted, at which time top candidates are invited for an initial phone interview. For more information about our lab culture and expectations, click here.
We are looking for diligent students with strong interests at the intersection of affective, computational, and developmental cognitive neuroscience. Prospective lab members should be interested in working on multiple levels of analysis (e.g., behavior, psychophysiology, neuroimaging) in order to understand basic motivated learning and memory mechanisms.
Most competitive applicants typically have:
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Completed an independent research project and/or made substantial intellectual and technical contributions to research projects.
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Achieved an intermediate-level or higher proficiency with at least one statistical computing language (e.g., Matlab, R, or Python) and are able to describe how they have used it to test a hypothesis.
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Experience working as a full/part-time research assistant or lab manager in their post-bac years.
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Strong organizational and communication (verbal and written) skills.
In your application, be sure to highlight your research skills (especially those pertaining to study design, data collection, data analysis, and presentations/manuscript preparation) and research experience, as these are often weighted most heavily in determining top candidates.
The lab is not a good fit for students who are primarily interested in clinical practice. This is an important area that relates to the lab’s work, but is not in the scope of the lab’s research. Applicants without a clear interest in developmental questions are also not a strong fit for the lab.
Grad students in the lab will have opportunities to contribute ongoing research projects in the lab and to develop their own area(s) of research that fall within the scope of the lab’s research focus. Grad students will be expected to run studies from start to finish, including developing an empirical question, designing an experiment, collecting and analyzing data, and preparing results for publication. I aim to tailor my mentoring approach to the needs and goals of each individual student. Students should anticipate regular discussions of strengths, weaknesses, short-term goals, and long-term goals. Students can expect to have weekly one-on-one meetings with me to develop project ideas, learn methods, review progress, and discuss career development (and more frequently as needed, especially in the first few years in the lab). Grad students should also expect to mentor undergraduates and/or research staff in the lab and will receive mentoring guidance. All students should expect to attend conferences, write manuscripts, and submit grant applications.