Meet the team

Dr. Weizhen Xie (Zane) directs the ICON lab at the University of Maryland, following postdoctoral training at the NIH/NINDS. He holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from University of California, Riverside. Prior to graduate school, he completed undergraduate education at Renmin University of China and received research training on Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology at University of California, Davis and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 

The "Xie" family name means "Thanks" in Chinese. He feels extremely grateful to be able to work with and learn from so many fantastic students and scholars over the years (see below).

Weizhen Xie (Zane, 谢蔚臻); zanexie@umd.edu

Research Staff

Sanikaa Thakurdesai, Lab manager

Sanikaa recently graduated from the University South Florida with a Major in Psychology and minor in Public Health. After coming to USF as an international student from India, she worked as a research assistant in various labs including Dr. Clayson’s Psychophysiology and neuroscience lab. She will now serve as a Lab Manager for the ICON lab at UMD and is excited for this opportunity to learn more about neuroscience. In the future, she hopes to study clinical/cognitive neuropsychology in graduate school. She is interested in learning more about how brain disorders affect cognition like memory and emotional processes. Outside of school, she enjoys reading, catching up with TV shows, photography, and talking to friends and family back home!

Jack Farley, Research Assistant & Data Analyst

Jack recently graduated from Duke University, studying Math and Computer Science. He previously worked as a research assistant under Dr. Nicolas Brunel, creating a model of the Macaque cerebellar cortex fit from data collected during visual tracking tasks. Jack also completed an NSF REU on learning algorithms for optimal collaborative path planning. In the future, Jack hopes to study computational neuroscience in graduate school. In his free time, Jack enjoys spending time with loved ones doing various activities such as walking, cooking, and playing board games.

Evalyn Johnson-Ramsay, Special Volunteer

Evalyn graduated magna cum laude with a BS in Biological Sciences and minors in Genetics and English in 2019. They have since been working in healthcare as a pharmacy technician, and are in the process of preparing to apply for an MD/PhD program. Special research interests include neurodegenerative disease and genetic/metabolic pathogenesis. Evalyn is currently helping us with spike sorting and analyzing time-serial neural data.

Graduate students collaborators

Xinchi Yu (NACS; Department of Lingusitic)

Xinchi is a 4th year PhD student in the Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science at University of Maryland. He received undergraduate education at Peking University, majoring in Psychology and Computational Linguistics. He also spent some time as a visiting student at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. With training in both language science and vision science, he is broadly interested in topics that cut across the two fields, with the hope of bringing the insights across the two fields together. He is interested in using both behavioral and neural research methods. Currently, his research focuses on two topics: (1) the working memory representations for visual and semantic-conceptual content, and (2) visual and linguistic representations during reading. In his leisure time, he loves metal music but prefers listening to it on his own rather than going to live performances. Personal site.

Undergraduate RAs

  • Shlok studies Computer Science at UMD. His coding journey began in an after-school club in middle school, leading to a deep-seated interest in computer science and its cross-disciplinary applications. Previously, Shlok engaged in computational neuroscience research alongside a PhD candidate from UC San Diego, which led to a publication in the Journal of Student Research. He also conducted bio-robotics research under Professor Reikensmeyer at UC Irvine as a UC research fellow, and published a paper on machine learning approaches to predicting the concentration of Particulate Matter. in his free time, Shlok enjoys staying active through working out and basketball, unwinding with movies, participating in clubs (such as Terp Rockets, Boxing, and BitCamp), hiking, and cherishing time with friends and family.

  • Josh is a Neurobiology and Physiology student at UMD, interested in neuroscience and cognitive research. Josh looks forward to the collected data that will give him some insight into the research. Originally a bioengineering student, he pivoted to the biology department to learn more about the brain and human physiology as it has been his biggest passion. In addition to his major, he is working towards a minor in Global Poverty. Outside of the classroom he works as a group leader in the Maryland Mentor Corps, helping underprivileged students in Prince George’s County learn to read and write. His hobbies include spending time with friends and family, listening to music, and hydroponic gardening.

  • Asbah is pursuing a Neuroscience and Public Health double degree at UMD. She has previous experience at the Naval Medical Research Center's Neurotrauma lab, where she developed a keen interest in neuroscience-related research as she studied the effects of blast induced traumatic injury on the blood-brain barrier. She hopes to learn more about the impacts of age and various brain disorders on memory and learning, as well as its applications in translational medicine. In her free time, she enjoys crocheting, playing tennis, and watching soccer with her friends! 

  • Daniel studies Neuroscience at UMD. His interest in neuroscience began in high school, in a psychology class, from learning about infamous experiments such as the Milgram and Stanford experiments to case studies about injuries to different parts of the brain. In the future, he is interested in pursuing further study into the pathologies of brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s. Aside from academics, Daniel enjoys improvising on the saxophone, streaming shows online, spending time with friends, and playing intramural soccer.

  • Srihitha studies Physiology and Neurobiology with a minor in Humanities, Health, and Medicine at UMD. She has had previous research experience working in the Material Measurement Laboratory at NIST, researching Nanofibrillated Cellulose, and conducting her own independent research on Brain-to-Brain Transmission and its Impact on the Medical Field. She is excited to serve as a Research Assistant in our lab, to learn more about the vast field of neuroscience! In the future, Srihitha hopes to pursue medicine, to become a Physician specializing in Internal Medicine. Outside of school, she enjoys participating in Indian Classical dance and music, reading, and traveling with her family! 

  • Alena is majoring in Bioengineering with a minor in Neuroscience at UMD, and her research interests lie in the realm of neuroengineering. She wants to explore neural prosthetics and brain-computer interfaces in the future, along with the potential to reverse-engineer the brain to restore its functions. She is eager to use technologies like EEG and fMRI to better understand memory and cognition, learning from the basics and gaining insights to improve the lives of those with neurological impairments. Beyond academics, she enjoys creative hobbies, such as calligraphy and crocheting. She likes taking naps regularly, spending time with friends and animals alike, and trying out new activities (e.g., juggling and skateboarding).

  • Pranav is a second year Computer Science and Math student at UMD. He first gained exposure to programming in high school after taking AP CSA. His passion for research also stemmed around this time after doing a Machine Learning project at George Mason University, looking into binary visualization to develop a computer vision algorithm to flag malicious files. He looks to indulge more into Machine Learning work and work with novel technologies. His time away from school is usually spent playing basketball, watching sports, and listening to music. Lately though, he's been delving into game development, replicating basic one dimensional games such as Wordle and Flappy Bird.

Collaborators

Weiwei Zhang, Professor, University of California, Riverside

Kareem Zaghloul, Senior Investigator, NIH/NINDS

Chris Baker, Senior Investigator, NIH/NIMH

Alexander Ksendzovsky, Assistant Professor in Neurosurgery, University of Maryland School of Medicine

Nils Fang Yang, Research Fellow, NIH/NINDS

Wilma Bainbridge, Assistant Professor, University of Chicago

Chaoxiong Ye, Academy Research Fellow, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

In memoriam

Robert Rosenthal, University Professor, University of California, Riverside

Past Trainees

Jenna Longbein, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine