Our Team
Meet an interdisciplinary and multicultural group of scientists, working together to understand how people use values to make decisions. These scientists have been using aesthetic values as a paradigm in this research.
Current Lab Members
Norberto Grzywacz
Principal Investigator
Dr. Norberto Grzywacz is a neuroscientist, engineer, professor, and higher-education administrator with more than forty years of experience. Born in Brazil, he completed his Ph.D. studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Read More Wikipedia LinkedIn Email
Shreeya Avadhanula
Shreeya Avadhanula is an undergraduate student of Physics and Cognitve and Behavioral Neuroscience at Loyola University Chicago. Her current research is on the feedback from the Valuation System to Sensory Modalities. This feedback is evolutionarily important but has powerful consequences such as confirmation bias. Read More Email
Gabriella Rodek
Gabriella Rodek is a junior undergraduate student at Loyola Chicago, majoring in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience and psychology. She is currently collaborating with Dr. Norberto Grzywacz and Dr. Robert Morrison on a project focused on creating computational models of creative networks in the brain. Read More Email
Akshita Cheruku
Akshita Cheruku is a senior undergraduate student at Loyola Chicago, majoring in molecular and cellular neuroscience. She is currently collaborating with Dr. Norberto Grzywacz on two projects. The first involves the aesthetics of movement in dance, with a focus on cultural values. In turn, the second is a collaboration with Drs. Norberto Grzywacz and Rebecca Silton on the effects of Major Depressive Disorder on aesthetic values. Read More LinkedIn Email
Elena Gonzalez Molina
Elena Gonzalez Molina is a master’s student in Applied Social Psychology at Loyola University Chicago. Her research at LaNeNa is on the effects of complexity of social identity and position in social hierarchy on the social conformity of values. Read More LinkedIn Email
Former Lab Members
Hassan Aleem
Hassan Aleem was a Post Doctoral Researcher at LaNeNa, where he investigated the social and cognitive mechanisms of aesthetic preferences. Read More. Twitter LinkedIn Email
Ivan Correa-Herran
Ivan Correa-Herran is a professor of architecture at the Universidad Nacional Colombia, Bogotá. He has collaborated on the projects on visual arts, architecture, and the aesthetic brain. Link Email
Maria Pombo
Maria Pombo was an undergraduate researcher at the Georgetown University Neuroaesthetics Lab (now LaNeNa). She proceeded to complete her Ph.D. in Cognition and Perception at New York University and is now an Aesthetics Engineer at Apple. Her LaNeNa research was on how the number of axes of symmetry in an image affected its aesthetic value. LinkedIn Email
Jiaan Mansuri
Jiaan Mansuri entered the lab Spring of 2019 as a Research Assistant, interested in exploring connections between his passions for neuroscience and the creative arts. Jiaan graduated from Georgetown University in 2020 with a Bachelor of Science in Neurobiology. He is currently in medical school at Temple University. Read More LinkedIn Email
Yewon Rhee
Yewon Rhee was a researcher at LaNeNa exploring the effects of social influence on aesthetic preferences, with a focus on social conformity. She completed her undergraduate studies at Loyola University Chicago, majoring in Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience and Sociology. Later, she got a master’s in Neuroscience degree from the same university. Currently, she is working towards her Ph.D. at Northwestern University. ReadMore LinkedIn Email
Sébastien Berquet
Sébastien Berquet was a French-American researcher at LaNeNa, where he investigated how the human brain perceives aesthetic values encountered throughout life. Sebastien was born and raised in Paris (France), and later moved to Chicago to complete his B.S in Molecular & Cellular Neuroscience. Later, he got a master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. He continues to collaborate with LaneNa in a study of how humans perceive visual complexity. Read More LinkedIn Email
Katie Mather
Katie Mather is a current research assistant for the social influence neuroaesthetics project and a junior Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience and Psychology major at Loyola University Chicago. Read More Twitter LinkedIn Email
Emilia Pasek
Emilia Pasek was an undergraduate student at Loyola University Chicago, graduating in Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience. She is now a post-baccalaureate student at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. In our lab, her work has been on the sensory deficits in autism spectrum disorder. Link Email
Morgan Mucha
Morgan Mucha was a High-School researcher with LaNeNa until 2023. She specializes in research regarding Medieval and Renaissance Europe, both artistically and historically. Link Email
Current Collaborators
Robert Morrison
Robert Morrison is an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology of Loyola University Chicago, who is an expert in the processes of creativity in the brain. Link
Rebecca Silton
Rebecca Silton is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the Department of Psychology of Loyola University Chicago. Her research is guided by a salutogenesis framework that focuses her studies on optimizing affective and cognitive function to cultivate positive emotion wellbeing outcomes across the lifespan. Link
Consuelo Correa
Consuelo Correa is an architect who studied at Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia) and Northeastern University (Boston). In addition, she is a Montessori teacher, getting her degree at Montessori Teacher Education Center, San Francisco, Bay Area. She has collaborated on the projects on visual arts and architecture. Email
Daniel Grzywacz
Daniel Grzywacz is an writer, illustrator, painter and filmmaker, who studied anthropology and neuroscience at the University of Southern California. He is the founder and owner of Yellow Dinosaur Productions. Link Instagram Email