people

Samuel Mehr

Principal Investigator (website)

Sam is an Eastman-trained musician and Harvard-trained scientist interested in how and why human minds are designed to perceive and produce music. He grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has lived in Rochester, Boston, Somerville, and Cambridge (USA); Wellington (New Zealand); Montréal (Canada); and now Auckland (New Zealand). You can follow Sam on Bluesky, where he often posts about being an academic dad.

Courtney Hilton

Postdoc/Research Fellow

Courtney studies the intersection of minds, music, and culture and is passionate about citizen science and big-data approaches to psychology. He grew up in the rural Australian town of Gidgegannup, and studied at the Australian National University and the University of Sydney. Originally joining as a postdoc at Harvard, he has followed the lab to Auckland and Yale. A committed haver of hobbies with too little time, Courtney can be found outside the lab making music and art, cooking, being an amateur naturalist and generally learning about things.

Eun Cho

Postdoc

Eun is a music educator specializing in early childhood music and a researcher, interested in interdisciplinary research that encompasses music, education, psychology, and culture. Since the completion of her DMA in music education (University of Southern California), she has been leading various research projects on the psychological aspects of everyday musical experiences in diverse populations. Aside from being an academic, she is a happily married mom with two kids, based in sunny California.

Logan James

Affiliated Postdoc

Logan is a biologist who investigates acoustic communication in animals. He completed his PhD with Jon Sakata (McGill University) studying biases in how birds learn and produce songs. Currently, he investigates call preferences in frogs with Mike Ryan (UT Austin/Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute), as well as how frog communication signals vary across species. He has recently expanded his cross-species comparisons to analyze biases in acoustic perception in a range of species such as crickets, tree frogs, sparrows, and humans.

Rebecca Evans

Affiliated Postdoc

Rebecca is a Research Fellow with the longitudinal cohort study Growing Up in New Zealand, responsible for the Family & Whānau domain. Her previous work in perinatal psychology (EPS Erasme, France) focused on mother-infant relationships, maternal speech, singing and inter-personal synchrony. Her PhD (Nanterre University, Paris) involved studying jazz improvisation and the socio-biological experience of playing ‘good time’ together. Her current research interests include music use and engagement in young tamariki and rangatahi (children and youth) of New Zealand, kapa haka, whanaungatanga (relationships), and music’s role in developing social bonds.

Roza Kamiloğlu

Affiliated Postdoc

Roza is a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at both Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on the production and perception of nonverbal vocalisations, such as laughter, screams, and sighs. She employs a multidisciplinary approach, utilising computational methods like machine learning and conducting comparative studies across different cultures and between humans and other species. During her Ph.D. studies, Roza investigated the vocal expressions of a wide range of positive emotions, including amusement, triumph, pride, and tenderness, laying the foundation for her ongoing research in this field.

Mila Bertolo

Graduate Student

Mila is a PhD student in Neuroscience at McGill University, working with Jon Sakata and Isabelle Peretz, and co-advised by Samuel Mehr. She works on questions about the origins of music, using tools from cross-cultural work, developmental psychology, and cross-species comparisons. You can follow her @mila_bertolo.

Jan Simson

Graduate Student

Jan joined the Lab at the beginning of 2019 as a research intern before returning full-time after graduating from his bachelor’s. He is currently finishing up his master’s in Psychology/Behavioral Data Science at the University of Amsterdam and has written his thesis with the lab trying to better understand what it is that makes us like music. In his free time he enjoys bouldering and playing tennis as well as the occasional bike ride. You can follow him @_jansimson.

Lidya Yurdum

Graduate Student

Lidya is a PhD student at the University of Amsterdam, co-supervised by Disa Sauter and Samuel Mehr. She studies the role of culture in human communication, focussing on non-verbal vocalisations and music. Lidya joined the Music Lab in 2019 as a summer RA, and has since continued to collaborate remotely from her new home in the Netherlands. She has a Research Masters in psychology from the University of Amsterdam. In her free time you can find her climbing/gymming/crocheting/baking (but definitely not running).

Marty Snarskis

Graduate student

Marty (they/he) joined the University of Auckland PhD program in February 2023. They are working on The Natural History of Song project, a rich dataset with music from all over the world, as well studying social inferences in infants. They previously studied the computational neuroscience of decision-making and perception at the University of Rochester and, after graduating, managed a lab studying memory at the University of Chicago. Marty enjoys being eccentric, playing music and other arts, reading widely, and hugging trees!

Juliet Barry

Graduate student

Juliet is a PhD student in the psychology department at the University of Auckland researching pitch perception and language acquisition in infants. She received a degree in Linguistics and Psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She worked as a lab coordinator in the psychology department investigating the development of emotional regulation across childhood. Outside of the lab, Juliet enjoys ballet and swimming in the ocean.

Zoé Schelp

Graduate Student

Zoé is a PhD student in psychology and cognitive neuroscience at the University of Auckland investigating anauralia, the inability to imagine sounds (a phenomenon like aphantasia, but for the ear). Her research is focusing on the effects of anauralia on verbal and non-verbal working memory. Outside of studies and teaching, she loves playing violin and guitar, reading, sewing and cooking/baking and winter sports.

Sorour Zekrati

Graduate Student

Sorour is a PhD candidate in linguistics at the University of Auckland. Her research focuses on pitch perception and examines the effect of conceptual metaphors on the way speakers of different languages (Persian and English) perceive and conceive pitch. Alongside her academic pursuits, Sorour enjoys graphic designing, learning new languages, reading psychology books, and listening to podcasts.

Sam (I-Chieh) Wei

Graduate Student

Sam Wei, an engineering graduate from National Taiwan University, formerly served as a research assistant at Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Specializing in signal processing and machine learning for audio, particularly AI in music creation, he is now a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland's School of Music. His research is dedicated to the ethical development of musical AI tools to assist musicians in safeguarding their intellectual property against unauthorized use.

Gage Quigley-Tump

Graduate Student

Gage is a PhD student in psychology and cognitive neuroscience at the University of Auckland, investigating auditory imagery. His research focuses on the physiological measurements of anauralia and auditory imagery. He enjoys playing guitar and listening to heavy metal.

Estelle Lai

Research Assistant

Estelle is an Honours student at the University of Auckland. She has a passion for psychology and music which has led her to join the Music Lab where she conducts research on the social implications of music. When she’s not studying, her interests outside of music include painting, reading, gaming and finding good places to eat.

Laurence Silk

Undergraduate intern

Laurence is completing a research internship at the music lab during his undergraduate degree where he is majoring in psychology at the University of Auckland. In his free time he loves running, hiking, snowboarding and almost anything involving spending time in the outdoors.

Lucas Oland

Undergraduate intern

Lucas is an undergraduate student at Yale University from Arizona who is beyond excited to travel to Auckland for a research internship with The Music Lab. His previous research focused on language network connectivity in Alzheimer’s patients using task-based fMRI. Outside of the lab, Lucas enjoys performing in musical theater and singing with his college a cappella group.

Maxx Shearod

Honours Student

Maxx is a senior at Yale University studying Cognitive Science with a theme in Musical Cognition. For his senior thesis, he has joined the Music Lab team to investigate the perception of rhythms. In his free time, he's an avid music listener, concert fanatic, and merch collector.

Jackson Downey

Honours Student

Jackson is a Senior at Yale College studying Cognitive Science with a concentration in Decision-sciences. He is joining the lab for his senior thesis to investigate new music taste formation in listeners, co-advised by Yarrow Dunham. Outside of the lab Jackson loves electronic music, cooking, and all things outdoors.

collaborators, past and present

• Quentin Atkinson
  University of Auckland
• Aaron Benjamin
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Charlie Chubb
  UC Irvine
• Joshua Fiechter
  Kairos Research
• Carolyn Fredericks
  Yale University
• Luke Glowacki
  Boston University
• Reyna Gordon
  Vanderbilt University Medical Center
• Gregory Hickok
  UC Irvine
• Joshua Hartshorne
  Massachusetts General Hospital
• Daniel Ketter
  Missouri State University
• Dean Knox
  University of Pennsylvania
• Max Krasnow
  Harvard University
• Tony Lambert
  University of Auckland
• Linda Mayes
  Yale Child Study Center
• Daniel Müllensiefen
  Goldsmiths, University of London
• Timothy O'Donnell
  McGill University
• Isabelle Peretz
  Université de Montréal
• Jon Sakata
  McGill University
• Disa Sauter
  University of Amsterdam
• Adena Schachner
  University of California, San Diego
• Manvir Singh
  University of California, Davis
• Diana Tamir
  Princeton University
• Sandra Trehub (d. 2023)
  University of Toronto, Mississauga
• Xiaoqin Wang
  Johns Hopkins University
• Ellen Winner
  Boston College
• Sarah Woolley
  McGill University

We also work with many others on the Natural History of Song project: learn more at themusiclab.org/nhs.

alumni

Pip Brown
Visiting PhD (2023), based at the University of Warwick.

Ekanem Ebinne
Research Assistant (2022-2023).

Rachel Yan
Affiliated grad student (2020-2022), currently a PhD student in Psychology at the University of Michigan.

Jingxuan Liu
Affiliated grad student (2020-2023), currently a PhD student at Columbia University.

Judy Lee
Research Assistant (2020-2021).

Cody Moser
Affiliated grad student (2018-2022), currently a PhD student in Cognitive and Information Sciences the University of California, Merced, working in the Smaldino Lab.

Alex Mackiel
Research Assistant (2021), currently a PhD student in Developmental Psychology at the University of Chicago.

Liam Crowley
Honours student (2019-2021), currently a PhD student in Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington.

Mila Bertolo
Lab manager (2019-2021) and summer intern (2018), currently a PhD student in Neuroscience at McGill University, working in the Sakata Lab

Anna Bergson
Summer intern (2019), currently practicing social work in Washington DC.

Brooke Milosh
Summer intern (2019), currently completing medical school at Hofstra University.

S. Atwood
Lab manager (2018-2019), currently a PhD student in Psychology at the Human Diversity Lab at Princeton University.

Constance Bainbridge
Research Assistant (2018-2020), currently a PhD student in Communication at the University of California, Los Angeles, working with Greg Bryant.

Julie Youngers
Summer intern (2018), currently working in the North Kansas City public schools.

Dylan Feng Xing
Summer intern (2018), as of August 2024 Dylan is completing a postdoc fellowship as a clinical psychologist at the Yale Health Center.

Kelsie Lopez
Summer intern (2018), currently a PhD student in the Plasticity in Neurodevelopment Lab with Dr. Laurel Gabard-Durnam in the Center for Cognitive and Brain Health.

Alma Bitran
Summer intern (2018), currently a PhD student at Rutgers University working in the DBT-RU practicum training site.

join

We are currently recruiting a postdoc (more information here) and a PhD student (more information here).

If you are interested in PhD study in our lab (separately from the above-advertised position), please contact Dr Mehr at sam@auckland.ac.nz with an expression of interest and a CV. We can support PhD applicants at the University of Auckland (in New Zealand) or at Yale, either in Psychology (if working jointly with a Psychology faculty member) or via the Child Study Center. Please note that funding for PhD study is competitive and may not be guaranteed, depending on the particulars of your application.

We do not currently have any open positions for full-time, salaried research assistants, but are able to host part-time RAs working in New Zealand or New Haven. If you are interested in such a position, for hourly pay; or if you would like to apply to work with us for academic credit (at the University of Auckland or at Yale) or work-study (at Yale), please contact us at musiclab@yale.edu. In general, we do not recruit volunteers, with the exception of students who are sponsored by their home institution to do an internship with us.

If you are a member of an underrepresented group in research, and interested in joining us, we can help you get funded with an NIH Diversity Supplement. Please get in touch with Dr Mehr at sam@auckland.ac.nz if you are interested in applying.