when i was around fifteen, i joined the cognitive neuroimaging lab at montclair state university, under head professor Dr. keenan. our lab used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to map functions like perspective taking, Theory of Mind, and perception to parts of the brain. around this time, i also attended lab meetings at the congition and perception lab at New York University for a brief while, focused more on object recognition and neuroaesthetics. unfortunately, my individual project on art style processing in the default mode network vs. the left occipital cortex was cancelled due to covid, haha.
though neuroscience is not my particular passion, i am so grateful to everyone in the labs (especially Dr. Keenan) for introducing me to research and its processes. i'm now studying computer science and environmental science, and hope now explore the field of collection, analysis, and display of environmental data using code. i worked on a project analyzing air quality data from some low-cost sensors along Cummins Highway in Boston.
starting around fall of 2022, i worked on a project at Dr. Mueller's environmental sensors lab here at Northeastern. to summarize , the city of boston set up a bunch of cheap air quality sensors along a highway with the goal of knowing how accurate they are and what they can tell the city and its people about air quality and city design . these sensors had a built in method to measure pm2.5 data which made an assumption that temp and humidity wouldn't have an effect on the measurement. Dr. Mueller suspected that this was wrong , since pm2.5 tends to stick together in certain weather conditions . i helped check out the clarity sensor data, compare it to a super expensive EPA station over different temp/humidity measurements, and test out machine learning algorithms to see if there was a better way to correct for environmental noise . if you have any questions, feel free to reach out !
Citation: Murray E, Brenya J, Chavarria K, Kelly KJ, Fierst A, Ahmad N, Anton C, Shaffer L, Kapila K, Driever L, Weaver K., Dial C, Crawford M, Hartman I, Infantino T, Butler F, Straus A, Walker SL, Balugas B, Pardillo M, Goncalves B, Keenan JP. Corticospinal Excitability during a Perspective Taking Task as Measured by TMS-Induced Motor Evoked Potentials. Brain Sciences. 2021; 11(4):513. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11040513
Citation: Brenya, J., Vieira, S., Chavarria, K., Weaver K., Savitska, L., Dial, C., & Keenan, J. P. (Under Review-Accepted with Revisions). The Effects of Uniforms and their implied Status on Attractiveness. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences
Citation: Weaver K., Soder, H., Yasin, S., McDermott, W., Bismal, K., Rougebec, A., Goldsteen, G., & Keenan, J. P. (2020). Freewill and Awareness: A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study, 125th Annual Eastern Psychological Association, Boston, MA, 33.