LAB MEMBERS

Meet the team!

Current Members

Faculty

Joe Toscano, Ph.D., Principal Investigator. Joe is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Villanova, Director of the Cognitive Science Program at Villanova, and Director of the WRAP Lab. He received his B.S. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from the University of Rochester in 2005 and his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 2011. From 2011-2014, he was a Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on questions about language comprehension and speech perception.

Cheyenne Munson Toscano, Ph.D. Cheyenne is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Villanova. She also received her Ph.D. from Iowa, and she completed her undergraduate work at Oberlin College. Prior to joining the department at Villanova, Cheyenne was a Visiting Instructor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Cheyenne's research focuses on perceptual learning in speech and effects of developmental language disorder.

Postdoctoral Fellows

Nikole Giovannone, Ph.D. Nikole is a Mendel Science Experience Postdoctoral Scholar at Villanova. She received her Ph.D. in Speech, Language, and Hearing Science from the University of Connecticut. Previously, she completed her B.A. in Psychology and Linguistics at Mount Holyoke College. Nikole's research focuses on individual differences in speech perception processes across variable populations.

Grad Students

	Ryan Henderson, Lab Manager. Ryan is second-year grad student and our Lab Manager. His research uses the auditory brainstem response (ABR) to investigate cue-integration during early stages of speech perception. Ryan is also interested in contributing to research on auditory neuropathy and other types of hearing loss. Outside of the lab, Ryan can be found having deep talks with his friends, running, binging Parks and Rec., or singing in as many different groups as he can.
	Rose Dietrich. Rose is a second-year student in Villanova's Psychology M.S. program. She graduated from Wilkes University in 2021 with a B.A. in Neuroscience and Psychology. While there, she was involved in several research projects, including work examining Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury in mouse models. She is interested in haptic and auditory perception and hopes to use findings from her research to help clinical populations.
	Anne Marie Crinnion. Anne Marie started working in the WRAP Lab during Summer 2016. She is currently a doctoral student at the University of Connecticut. She's interested in computational modeling, especially when applied to speech categorization. When she's not thinking about Steiner trees, she loves cycling, running, and listening to country music.
	Harini Sankar. Harini is a second-year graduate student in Villanova’s Psychology M.S. program. She graduated with a B.Sc. in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Nottingham, Malaysia in 2020. She went on to complete a Masters of Research degree at Nottingham in 2021, where she investigated how man-made and natural environmental contexts can influences visual perception. She is interested in creating computational models to understand how listeners account for context during speech perception.
	Reet Patel. Reet is a second-year graduate student in the Psychology M.S. program at Villanova. She graduated from Stockton University with a B.S. in Psychology and a minor a Behavioral Neuroscience. She is interested in bilingualism and word learning. Outside the lab, she likes to spend time with her poodle Loki and her friends (but mostly Loki).
	Sam Sinemus. Sam is a graduate student in the M.S. program at Villanova. After graduating in 2016 from Skidmore College with a major in Psychology and minor in Economics, he moved to San Francisco where he worked as a behavioral data analyst before deciding to go back to school. He is interested in socio-cognitive concepts with a focus on the intersection between personality and linguistics.

Undergraduates

	Aaliyah Bullen. Aaliyah is a sophomore at Swarthmore College working toward a double major in Cognitive Science and Computer Science. In the lab, she is investigating speech perception using neural network models trained on large sets of speech sounds. Broadly, she's interested in computationally modeling language processes and hopes to continue similar work in grad school. For fun, she enjoys reading and playing the saxophone.
	Tatum Calabrese. Tatum is a sophomore from Philadelphia working towards a Psychology B.S. degree and is on a pre-med track. Tatum joined the WRAP Lab in Fall 2022. Outside of the lab, Tatum enjoys listening to music, playing soccer, attending small concerts, and volunteering as a firefighter.
	Isabelle Jacowleff. Isabelle is a sophomore at Villanova majoring in Economics and minoring in Psychology and Spanish. She joined the lab to learn more about language processing, and she is also very interested in bilingualism. Outside of the lab, Isabelle likes playing basketball and exploring new places with friends.
	Bella Lentini. Bella is a junior at Villanova working towards a B.S. in Psychology with minors in Cognitive Science and Global Health. She joined the lab in at the beginning of 2022 and is very interested in studying speech perception and ASL in the future. After her studies at Villanova, she plans to attend graduate school for speech-language pathology. Outside the lab, Bella likes hiking, volunteering, and spending time with her family.
	Tia Miller. Tia is a junior from Colorado pursing a B.S. in Psychology with a concentration in Cognitive Science. She joined the WRAP Lab in Spring 2022 and is interested in pursuing graduate work in Speech-Language Pathology after graduation.
	Kaite Simpson. Kaite is a senior from Connecticut double-majoring in Psychology and French and Francophone Studies and minoring in Counseling. She joined the lab in fall of 2023 and is planning to attend graduate school for speech-language pathology after studying at Villanova. Outside of the lab, Kaite enjoys dancing, yoga, traveling, and spending time with friends and family.
	Shi-Chiao Tsao. Shi-Chiao is a junior at Villanova majoring in Biology. She is interested in using cognitive neuroscience techniques to study how the human brain perceives and processes language. Outside of the lab, Shi-Chiao enjoys traveling, reading and gardening.

Kids

	Ellis Toscano. After spending several years studying spoken language, Ellis has been focusing more on reading and writing lately. In his free time, he enjoys playig Minecraft, hanging out with his cats, and spending time with his friends.
	Kent Toscano. Kent has been following-up on some of Ellis' earlier work, and now he's making great progress with starting to study reading as well. Outside the lab, Kent enjoys playing Minecraft with his brother and building Lego spaceships.
	Susan Toscano. The third researcher (subject?) in our long-term longitudinal study, Susan is the youngest member of the team! We've been seeing a lot of language milestones from her recently. Stay tuned... When she's not studying language development, one of Susan's favorite things to do is to go camping.

Alumni

Post Docs

Grad students

Undergraduates