Science Stories Series: Hannah Mechtenberg
PhD Candidate in the Perception, Action and Cognition Division of Psychological Sciences
Hosted by the IBACS Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) Committee
Date/Time: Wednesday, February 11th at 11:30am
Location: McHugh 301
Official Story: Hannah Mechtenberg earned her BS in Neuroscience with a concentration in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience and a minor in Biomedical Sciences from Colorado State University in the winter of 2017. After taking a moment to catch her breath, she joined Emily Myers’ lab as a lab manager in July of 2017. She elected to stay at the University of Connecticut for her PhD after spending a few years learning the ins and outs of speech perception. She received her MS in 2022 and is now in the final stages of her dissertation. She plans to graduate with her doctorate in May of 2026. Her work, broadly construed, is concerned with how people cope with uncertainty. She uses a multi-method approach to examine how listeners confront and resolve uncertainty in spoken language with aims to develop a neurobiologically grounded model of perceptual adaptation. Beyond empirical research, she also works to reduce uncertainty about science in the general public. Upon her arrival at UConn, she started The Spoken Word magazine to make research in the fields of aphasia and speech perception more accessible to non-expert communities. She has also completed an internship with the Psychonomic Society’s press office, been a senior team lead with the NSF-funded Language Science Station since 2022, and most recently accepted a part-time role as an outreach and communications specialist with an app that makes archives more accessible for researchers all over the United States.
Unofficial Story: Hannah grew up in Colorado and always planned to be some sort of scientist. Well, there were brief moments when she wanted to be an Olympic swimmer or an architect or a philosopher or a novelist, but she eventually settled on scientist because she had an insatiable desire to know more about the natural world. From an early age, you could find her sprawled in the grass observing the hunting habits of wolf spiders or cataloguing how many crawfish currently lived in the stream across the street. Her grandmother, who lived in Chicago, would frequently mail her owl pellets to dissect or strange mushrooms to identify. There was always more to observe and to learn about—from seashells to birds to the stars—it was endless. It wasn’t until she took an anatomy class in high school did she know what type of scientist she was going to be. After spending a class dissecting sheep brains, her teacher noticed a spark and lead her back to a storeroom with a preserved human brain floating in a glass jar. And that was all it took. Her journey from then-on was fueled by that singular moment of wonder, though the path was not always smooth or straightforward. This talk will reflect on the interwoven influence of curiosity, wonder, and doubt and how they’ve shaped Hannah’s journey. From stargazing in the Utah desert to nearing the culmination of her PhD at UConn, she will use snapshots from her life to explore how we find meaning and purpose in science and beyond.
About the Science Stories Series: Inspired by the “Sense of Wonder” event a few years ago organized by graduate student Hannah Mechtenberg and others – the goal of the “Science Stories” is to get to know the members of our community. These stories may be about life before UConn, how you got here, the ups and downs; successes and failures; lightbulb moments or moments of regret. This talk series is an opportunity for members of our community to share their journeys in and around science—to learn about each other’s lived experiences/identities, obstacles/challenges faced, and the varied paths we each take. We welcome nominations from all members of the IBACS community and particularly welcome nominations by/for international community members, first-generation faculty/students, and individuals from underrepresented identities in the sciences. Submit a nomination or self-nominate for a future talk or event.