Announcements

Publication Award Recipients 2025-2026

IBACS Publication Awards provide funding to help researchers cover the cost of submitting their publications, providing affiliates with greater access to the top publications in their fields.

Travel Award Recipients 2025-2026

IBACS Travel Awards help affiliated students and postdoctoral researchers cover expenses associated with presenting research at conferences and scholarly events.

2025-2026 Awardees

  • Zeinab Tajik-Mansouri, Spring 2026
  • Wesley Leong, Spring 2026
  • Pengyu Zong, Spring 2026
  • Kelly Mahaffy, Spring 2026
  • Ethan Beri, Fall 2025
  • Madeline Resnick, Fall 2025
  • Shabnam Alizadeh Incheh, Fall 2025
  • Jinglei Ren, Fall 2025
  • Noah Raffone, Fall 2025
  • Kush Kataria, Fall 2025
  • Arinjoy Bhattacharjee, Fall 2025
  • Amna Besirevic, Fall 2025

Undergraduate Research Award Recipients 2025-2026

The Undergraduate Research Supply Award provides students with funds that they can use toward supplies and other expenses associated with an ongoing independent research project. The Undergraduate Summer Research Award provides funds for students to conduct independent research during the summer session.

Summer 2026

Summer Research Award Recipients

  • Sarah Cole – Advisor: Heather Read
  • Sugita Mahendarkar – Advisor: Steve Kinsey
  • Abhigna Reddy – Advisor: Sudha Srinivasan

Fall 2025 & Spring 2026

Supply Research Award Recipients

  • Arnav Balaji – Advisor: Ephraim Trakhtenberg
  • Jayda Barros – Advisor: John Salamone
  • Sharanya Chatterjee – Advisor: Brian Kelley
  • Sarah Cole – Advisor: Heather Read
  • Clyde D’Souza – Advisor: Ephraim Trakhtenberg
  • Jonathan He – Advisor: Geoffrey Tanner
  • Maren Hill – Advisor: Lindsay Butler
  • Katarina Kalajzic – Advisor: Timothy Spellman
  • Lillian Perry – Advisor: John Salamone
  • Brielle Pierre Phillippe – Advisor: Etan Markus
  • Angelica Whitney – Advisor: Ed Large

Summer Graduate Fellows 2026

IBACS Summer Graduate Fellowships provide three months of research funding to graduate students working on topics with relevance to the brain and cognitive sciences.

2026 Fellowship Recipients

Ethan Beri, Psychological Sciences

Title of Proposed Research: Evaluating Dyadic Interactions as Predictors of Observational Learning Success in Rats

Arinjoy Bhattacharjee, Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences

Title of Proposed Research: Effort Allocation and Feedback Processing in Preschool Children with DLD: Evidence from Pupillometry

Marcus Harris, Educational Psychology

Title of Proposed Research: AI Assisted Tools for Reproducible Cognitive Neuroscience Research

Maria Jaakson, Nursing

Title of Proposed Research:Developing new treatments for Opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH)

Siqi Liang, Psychological Sciences

Title of Proposed Research: Understanding the Effects of Early Environmental Factors on the Development of EEG Alpha Rhythms in Infancy

Sorour Sarihi, Nutritional Sciences

Title of Proposed Research: Food Matrix–Driven Fucoxanthin Modulation of the Microbiome–Gut–Brain Axis and Cognitive Resilience

Zeinab Tajik Mansouri, Biomedical Engineering

Title of Proposed Research: Computational Methods for Calcium Imaging and Neural Decoding

Finian Zakas, Psychological Sciences

Title of Proposed Research: Cannabidiol Modulation of Associative Learning to Reduce Cue-Induced Substance Use Behaviors in Young Adults

Postdoc Opening at University of Western Ontario’s Centre for Brain and Mind

Dr. Marc Joanisse at the University of Western Ontario is currently recruiting new postdoctoral fellows funded by the Western Postdoctoral Fellowship program. They’re seeking talented recent PhDs interested in working in the area of language and reading processing, where their work focuses on the intersection of cognition, neuroimaging and computation. Work could target any aspect of development, processing and disorders. This might be of particular interest to someone who has developed expertise in one of these areas and wants to expand their toolkit.
Fellowships will provide a minimum stipend of $70,000/year (pending any association agreement changes), plus recoverable benefits and a $5,000/year research allowance for two years. A successful candidate can start the position sometime between July 2026 – June 2027 (without exception). However, there is a relatively short internal deadline (March 20), but the PI is willing to work with the right candidate to build a successful application.

Details about the lab are here: https://lrcn.uwo.ca/

Details about the Centre for Brain and Mind including available facilities and other PIs: https://www.uwo.ca/bmi/

Western PDF Program details are here: https://www.ssc.uwo.ca/research/postdoctoral_scholars/western_postdoctoral_fellowships_program.html

Please spread the word!

Accepting Applications for IBACS E-Lab Manager Position (Electrophysiology & Eye Tracking)

We invite applications for the E-Lab Manager position for the academic year 2026/2027 with possible summer 2026 funding.

In this 10-hour / week position, the E-lab (Electrophysiology and Eye Tracking) manager assists lab users with training of lab members, scheduling, inventory, troubleshooting equipment, and enforcing lab policies & procedures.

APPLY HERE

Application Deadline: March 9, 2026

Learn more about the E-Lab on our webpage. If you have questions, please email the IBACS Coordinator, Crystal Mills at crystal.mills@uconn.edu.

Spring 2026 IBACS Seed Grant Applications Due 4/8

The Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (IBACS) seed grant application is now open. Seed Grants provide funding to eligible affiliates for interdisciplinary projects and research initiatives consistent with the IBACS mission. Successful applications typically involve collaborations that require expertise across laboratories and traditional disciplinary boundaries. IBACS prioritizes projects that will provide pilot data in support of applications for external funding and publications. Seed funding is intended to support direct research costs such as supplies, participant fees, animal costs, and student support. Please submit letters of intent as soon as possible, but at least 2 weeks prior to the seed grant application deadline (by 3/25/26), to allow time for review and feedback prior to submission of the full proposal.

Open to: Faculty and postdoctoral affiliates. UCH investigators are eligible to apply so long as a Storrs collaborator is listed as a Co-PI. Please view the webpage for full eligibility requirements.

Key Application Dates: Large awards (>$10K) spring deadline: April 8, 2026. Our small seed grant awards (<$10K) are accepted on a rolling basis, but funds have been exhausted. However, we encourage those who wish to submit a small seed grant proposal to still do so following the large seed grant deadline.

Current Priorities:

  1. Given the current funding landscape, we will be prioritizing proposals on topics of federal priority and relevance to brain and cognitive science fields such as critical and emerging technologies (AI), Health, and more.
  2. Applications with more efficient budgets will be prioritized so we can fund as many projects as possible. You are encouraged to request only funds that are critical to the proposed project (rather than aiming for the maximum allowable funding amount).

For full details on the seed grant program, including the letter of intent application, full seed grant application, and allowable costs, please check our seed grant webpage.

Any questions should be directed to the Institute Coordinator, Crystal Mills at crystal.mills@uconn.edu or (860) 486-4937.

IBRAiN Research Software Engineer Role – Apps Due 2/23

The Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (IBACS) is inviting graduate students to apply for the IBACS-BIRC Research Assistantships in Neuroimaging (IBRAiN) Program for the Research Software Engineer role ONLY. These graduate assistantships are for 10 hours per week during the Fall (2026) and Spring (2027) semesters at the Brain Imaging Research Center Core (BIRC). During the first year, assistants will be trained in neuroimaging methods, data science, and reproducibility. They spend the remaining allocated hours at BIRC, supporting users of the facilities. Examples of work include:
  • Helping design and implement experimental procedures for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalogram (EEG), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), etc.
  • Advising users on how to effectively prepare research participants.
  • Advising users on data analysis.
  • Overseeing use of equipment by others.
  • Training undergraduate students with basics of equipment use.
Applicants will be expected to commit to the full duration of the assistantship (fall & spring). Research assistants may also be eligible for summer funding and an allocation of 20 hours of resource time to be used at BIRC during the fellowship.

Students will participate in common training activities but will primarily specialize in one of three roles at BIRC. Note – this call is for the Research Software Engineer role ONLY

  1. Research Software Engineer. This role assists researchers in using BIRC facilities including equipment training, data analysis, sing existing software, and engineering and implementing new analytic tools when needed, implement changes to BIRC webpage when necessary. Qualified candidates will have demonstrated proficiency in Python, MATLAB, or Julia, as well as Unix-like computing environments.

Key Application Dates: Opened on Feb. 2, 2026 and will close on Feb. 23, 2026

Subject to funding constraints, these assistantships could be renewed for a further year. Please view full details on our IBRAiN webpage before applying. 

If you have any questions, please contact the Institute Coordinator, Crystal Mills at crystal.mills@uconn.edu. 

IBACS Outreach Fellowship Applications Due 2/20

The Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (IBACS) is pleased to offer summer fellowships of $5K each for up to four graduate students to be part of our Science Alliance Mobile (SAM) Outreach Team this year thanks in part to a generous donation. This fellowship offers affiliated graduate students the chance to inspire the next generation of brain and cognitive sciences scholars.
 

Students will be expected to participate in SAM’s outreach events, leading demos and engagement activities. We hope these activities can relate to fellows research interests or methods they are familiar with. Our goal is to host events and provide opportunities in areas with underrepresented populations to increase interest in education within the brain and cognitive science fields. During the academic year, time will need to be spent developing plans for demos and educational activities for all ages, but we expect the majority of outreach events to take place in the summer (3-4 in the summer and 1-2 per semester). Events will be on campus on Fairfield Way, at regional campuses, or at various other locations within the state. We understand that fellows will not be able to attend all events due to scheduling conflicts.

Preference may be given to students who (1) are members of a group that is underrepresented at the University of Connecticut; (2) have overcome obstacles such as socioeconomic, educational, or other societal disadvantages (arising, for example, through prejudice and/or discrimination); or (3) have worked with such groups to help overcome these or other obstacles.

Application Deadline: The application  will close on 2/20/26

Please view all details, including eligibility and conditions, on the Outreach Fellowship webpage prior to applying.

Questions about the fellowship or application/selection process can be directed to Crystal Mills at crystal.mills@uconn.edu.