Lab News
March 2025
Audrey led a wonderful journal club discussion! This was the first time we’ve really torn apart a paper with so many critiques--such a fun and engaging hour, esp. with Drs. Demarco and Deng joining in person!
Congrats to Annika for being selected as one of the six students in The Paired Undergraduate Mentoring Program in Uronephrology at Duke University! She will spend 8 weeks this summer conducting a mentored research project. Knock them dead, Annika!
Sara led an interactive tutorial on how to use PubMed, Web of Science, and the PRISMA 2020 flow diagram for systematic literature reviews and meta-analysis. Well done, Sara!
February 2025
Emma gave a fantastic lab meeting presentation, sharing updates on her work with Drs. Turner and Liu on Posterior Cortical Atrophy.
Congratulations to Beth for being awarded the National Eye Institute Early Career Scientist Travel Grant (Student Travel Award) to present her talk, Homotopic reorganization of the visual word form area following surgical resection of connected cortex, at the 2025 Vision Sciences Society Meeting! Beth worked so hard on her rotation project in the lab and absolutely deserve this wonderful combo of achievement (travel award & talk). The PI still vividly remembers the excitement of receiving her own VSS Student Travel Award exactly 10 years ago—it’s a full circle moment!
Congratulations to Kyungji (KJ) for winning a competitive talk titled Decoding tool actions regardless of the observed acting body part and a Travel Award at the 2025 Vision Sciences Society Meeting! She will be presenting her Master's thesis with Ella Striem-Amit, which received the Best Scientific Poster Award for the Master of Science in Integrative Neuroscience Program from Georgetown University. What a fantastic achievement!
Jamieson presented a wonderful eye-tracking tutorial on the EyeLink Portable Duo system and led a great discussion on the research article "Two Fixations Suffice in Face Recognition".
The Fantastic Four—our cluster hire cohort—had our first outdoor faculty mentoring meeting with our wonderful pod leader, Max Riesenhuber. With spring just around the corner, we’re feeling grateful and proud of our pod!
January 2025
The VPP lab hosted the welcoming-back lab lunch (Turkish, Greek, and Lebanese cuisines from Zaytinya) and the first lab meeting of 2025! We’re excited to continue our lab lunch tradition of dining around the world!
The VPP lab is excited to have Audrey Agyin on board! Audrey is a junior majoring in Neurobiology and co-mentored by Drs. Liu and Coate for her Biology Research Tutorial (BIOL 4950).
Congratulations to the VPP lab! Our VIBRANT study has been officially accepted as a 2025 Laidlaw Scholars Project under the ‘STEM Project’ section.
December 2024
The first baby of our VPP lab, Ori (meaning "my light" in Hebrew), arrived on 12/23/2024 on campus at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital. Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 🎉
A huge congratulations to Emma Gatewood on receiving multiple acceptances to master’s programs in public health, including her top choice! 🎉
VPP lab holiday lunch from Mai Thai & Levain Bakery!
November 2024
Happy birthday to our amazing November girls in the lab—KJ, Sara, and Annika!
Congrats to our PI, Dr. Tina Liu, who's now officially a faculty member on the Neuroscience of Language T32 Training Grant!
October 2024
A spooky sneak peek at our Halloween decor! 🎃👻
Congrats to our PI, Dr. Tina Liu, who's officially an Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience (IPN) faculty now!
Emma Gatewood gave a fantastic presentation on Posterior Cortical Atrophy for her Human Science Senior Capstone Project with Drs. Tina Liu and Raymond (Scott) Turner. The topic sparked so much enthusiasm, with about 15 questions from the class, and Emma handled each one with incredible skill. The VPP lab is so proud of you, Emma!
The VPP lab renovation project is complete! Check out our swanky new look :-)
September 2024
Exciting news for the VPP lab! The VIBRANT (Vision Improvement through Behavioral Rehabilitation And Neuroplasticity Training) study has received approval from the Georgetown-MedStar IRB.
Welcome, GU undergrads Aasvi Bist, Annika Elstrom, Sara Melese, Jamieson Park, and Emma Gatewood, to the lab. The PI is beyond excited to work with you and support you as you navigate your premed study, research, and professional growth.
Our PI, Dr. Tina Liu, recently gave a lecture/seminar on Vision as part of the ICOS 7710 Cognitive Science Core Course. Check out her slides here!
The VPP lab hosted its very first happy hour to celebrate Beth Rispoli's fantastic summer rotation talk!
July 22, 2024
Welcome Kyungji (KJ) Moon, MS, to the VPP lab as the Lab Manager and Clinical Research Associate. She will be focusing on the Precision Vision Recovery After Stroke line of research. We are super excited to have her here!
July 8, 2024
The VPP lab is excited to welcome Beth Rispoli, MA, back to DC! Beth is an IPN graduate student currently doing her summer rotation in the VPP lab. Her smile is bigger than her face and lights up the entire lab :-)
June 18, 2024
At the 10th Annual BRAIN Initiative Conference, our PI, Dr. Tina Liu, was matched with Cansu Erkan, a rising senior at UMD majoring in psychology and minoring in neuroscience, as her BRAIN 2024 mentee. Cansu did an excellent job presenting her first-authored poster!
May 19, 2024
Bing Li nailed her Sunday afternoon talk in the 'Plasticity and Learning' session at VSS 2024!
May 9, 2024
Congratulations to Tori Gobo for submitting her first-authored abstract entitled "Visual evoked pupil, blink, and eye movements in cortical blindness" to the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago. Tori will soon pursue her PhD degree at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX.
May 8, 2024
Lab publication alert! Liu, T.T. (2024). Unraveling nature and nurture in cortical (re)organization. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 25, 451,
DOI: 10.1038/s41583-024-00825-x
Congratulations to Elena Younhye Ock for accepting the offer to pursue her MD/PhD degree at the University of Colorado Boulder.
May 2, 2024
Bing Li gave an excellent practice talk during the first joint (SAMP-VPP) lab meeting for the upcoming Vision Sciences Society Meeting (VSS 2024) in Florida.
April 10, 2024
The VPP welcomes its first non-GU visitor, Elena Younhye Ock, an NIH postbac working with Eli Merriam (primary mentor and lab PI) and Tina Liu (co-mentor). Elena is a future MD/PhD student who regularly shadows Dr. Benjamin Osborne in his eye clinic at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.
April 4, 2024
Congratulations to Bing Li, who has been awarded the 2024 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for her outstanding proposal developed during her time as an NIH postbac under the mentorship of Tina Liu (primary mentor) and Eli Merriam (co-mentor and lab PI). Bing will soon embark on the next chapter as a neuroscience graduate student at Princeton University.
April 1, 2024
The VPP lab is now officially open (and eagerly awaiting furniture delivery)!