people

Samuel Mehr

Principal Investigator (website)
sam@wjh.harvard.edu

Sam is an Eastman-trained musician and Harvard-trained scientist interested in cognitive and developmental psychology, music production and music perception, evolutionary anthropology, and other things. He grew up in Cambridge, MA and Lexington, MA. You can follow him @samuelmehr.

Mila Bertolo

Lab Manager

Mila is a psychology graduate of Glasgow University, where she worked with social robot facial expressions. After a 14 year-long stint in Luxembourg and Scotland, and having survived the British ABRSM classical piano exams, she's returned to her birth city of Boston to research what it is about human evolution and culture that has made us so emotionally responsive to organized sound. Outside the lab you can find her wandering aimlessly around new cities, and cycling across Europe.

Constance Bainbridge

Developer / Research Assistant (website)
cbainbridge@g.harvard.edu

Constance is a musician and front-end web developer/designer with a background studying classical violin at Boston University as well as researching the perception of auditory and visual media in the vision lab (CSAIL) at MIT. Constance is interested in exploring the ways we use sound to experience the world around us and communicate emotion and mood states.

Jan Simson

Developer / Research Fellow (website)

Jan is a Psychology graduate from Germany currently working at The Music Lab as a research fellow. He graduated from the University of Konstanz and has a background as a specialized computer scientist in application development. Outside of the lab he likes to sail, play tennis, or go climbing. He is interested in finding out how music can affect us in such strong ways, especially when it comes to our emotions.

Lidya Yurdum

Research Fellow

Lidya is a psychology graduate from Bogazici University, Istanbul. She’s interested in studying auditory sensation and perception, especially as it relates to music. One of the subjects she’s most excited to work on is the differential processing of pitch in speech versus music, and the use of auditory illusions to gain insight into how the brain processes sound. In her spare time, you can find her listening to podcasts or watching The Great British Bake Off.

Ghazal Jessani

Research Assistant

Ghazal Jessani is a Master’s student at Harvard University specializing in Human Development and Psychology. She recently completed her undergraduate studies from the University of Toronto where she did a double major in Genetics & Biotechnology and Psychology, and a double minor in Mental Health and English. When she is not at school, she can be found volunteering, performing spoken word or practicing yoga!

Joyce Seok

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Joyce is an undergraduate student at Harvard University from Camarillo, CA concentrating in Psychology with a secondary in Economics. She is interested in studying the relationship between music and emotion, and the ways in which music can encourage or discourage certain human behaviors. At school, Joyce is one of the captains of the Harvard Cheerleading team and hosts a radio show at WHRB 95.3 fm, Harvard’s student radio station. In her free time, she enjoys learning how to mix music, dancing, going to concerts, or watching competitive reality TV!

Yuefan Sun

Research Assistant

Yuefan is a graduate student at Harvard University studying Human Development and Psychology. With her interest in both psychology and music, she is particularly passionate about exploring the effect of music on children's affect and behavior, the long-term effect of music on both children's and parents' health, and how research on music psychology can inform practices or interventions in classroom settings. In her free time, she enjoys listening to music and watching movies!

Cody Moser

Visiting Graduate Student

Cody is a biological anthropology PhD student at Texas A&M University concentrating on questions in primate sensory ecology including broader work in bioacoustics, face perception, and animal deception. In his free time he enjoys traveling, writing, and the occasional pick-up game of chess.

Harry Lee-Rubin

Undergraduate Researcher

Harry is an undergraduate at Harvard University from Brooklyn, New York planning to concentrate in psychology. Current interests include timbre perception, sensorimotor synchronization, and cross-modality in implicit cognition. In his free time, you might find him playing didgeridoo or scribbling in his diary.

Brooke Milosh

Undergraduate Researcher

Brooke is an undergraduate student from North Attleboro, Massachusetts studying cognitive science and music at Yale University. She is interested in studying how animals cognize music in order to better understand the human evolution of music. At school, Brooke sings in and acts as the assistant conductor for the Yale Glee Club, is a teaching artist with the Morse Chorale youth choir, and conducts research at Yale's Canine Cognition Center.

Liam Crowley

Undergraduate Researcher

Liam Crowley is an undergraduate student majoring in psychology and philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington. He is currently working on a project investigating children’s ability to predict musical function from a song’s form alone. Outside of lab work you’ll find Liam tending bar at his part time job, and if he’s lucky, hitting the slopes of Mt Ruapehu.

Rachel Yan

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Rachel is a rising senior from Smith College, currently residing in Northampton, MA. As an avid piano player, who also studies psychology and data science, she is curious about the impact of music on children’s social- cognitive development. She has been working on a project looking at how dialect change may affect children’s literacy skills with Peter de Villiers at Smith, and hopes to broaden her scope of research in music. When she’s not working, she enjoys finding good coffee and wondering around the neighborhood.

Jing Liu

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Jing is an undergraduate studying psychology and statistics at Duke University. She is interested in the intersection of psychology and music, as well as how language might interact with music perception. In her free time, she enjoys playing her flute, messing around with the piano, sipping boba, and wandering around the old streets in her hometown Beijing.

Iris Bi

Research Assistant

Iris is a cognitive science graduate of UCLA, originally from Montreal. Her undergraduate research focused on the role of language in other cognitive domains, including music. One question she’s interested in is why human minds perceive music the way they do, and whether this differs across individuals and cultures. In her spare time you’ll find her cooking elaborate meals, quoting Albert Camus, and meditating.

collaborators, past and present

• Quentin Atkinson
  University of Auckland
• Amy Belfi
  Missouri University of Science and Technology
• Pramit Chaudhuri
  University of Texas, Austin
• Joseph Dexter
  Dartmouth University
• Luke Glowacki
  Pennsylvania State University
• Reyna Gordon
  Vanderbilt University
• Gina Grimshaw
  Victoria University of Wellington
• David Haig
  Harvard University
• Joshua Hartshorne
  Boston College
• Henkjan Honing
  University of Amsterdam
• Daniel Ketter
  Missouri State University
• Dean Knox
  Princeton University
• Max Krasnow
  Harvard University
• Christopher Lucas
  Washington University in St. Louis
• Alia Martin
  Victoria University of Wellington
• Daniel Müllensiefen
  Goldsmiths, University of London
• Timothy O'Donnell
  McGill University
• Isabelle Peretz
  Université de Montréal
• Steven Pinker
  Harvard University
• Laurie Santos
  Yale University
• Adena Schachner
  University of California, San Diego
• Elizabeth Spelke
  Harvard University
• Manvir Singh
  Harvard University
• Diana Tamir
  Princeton University
• Sandra Trehub
  University of Toronto, Mississauga
• Ellen Winner
  Boston College

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

alumni

S. Atwood
Lab manager (2018-2019), currently a PhD student in Psychology at the Social Cognitive Development Lab (University of Washington)

Julie Youngers
Summer intern (2018), currently an MA student in Psychology at the Infant Studies Centre (University of British Columbia)

We've also been incredibly lucky to work with many fantastic research assistants, including Alma Bitran, Anna Bergson, Anya Keomurjian, Dara Lee, Dylan Xing, Emilė Radytė, Hannah Alton, Kamila Czachorowski, Kelsie Lopez, Lin Ni, Mona Miao, Nathan Robinson, Nivi Ravi, Terry Lee, TJ Song, and William Swett.

join

We do not have any open positions at present, and our postdoc and RA searches are on hold due to the COVID19 pandemic. If you are interested in applying to work with us as a volunteer during the academic year, please contact us at musiclab@g.harvard.edu.

If you are from a group that is underrepresented in research, and interested in joining us, we can help you get funded (details of this NIH funding here). Please get in touch with Dr. Mehr at sam@wjh.harvard.edu.

Dr. Mehr is not currently accepting full-time graduate students, but if you are applying to graduate school and are interested in collaborating as a co-supervised graduate student (either at Harvard or at another university), please contact him at sam@wjh.harvard.edu.