People

Dr Verena Pritchard joined the lab in August 2020 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to work on a project investigating neurodevelopmental outcomes following childhood brain cancer with Professor Greig de Zubicaray. She has also obtained external funding to work on a closely related project focusing on school reintegration experiences in child and adolescent brain cancer survivors and their families

Verena has expertise in longitudinal research within the fields of applied neurodevelopmental, cognitive, and educational psychology. She began her career as the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation’s Child Health Fellow (NZ). This was followed by lectureships in NZ, UK, and Australia. She has also worked as a Research Fellow at ACU alongside Professorial Fellow Charles Hulme (University of Oxford, UK)

Verena has published widely on academic achievement, executive function, attention and memory in notable Q1 journals including JAMA Pediatrics, Developmental Psychology, Child Psychology, and the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

Carly Hood

Carly is a Master’s student in the LCBS lab. She joined us from the University of Queensland, where she completed her Bachelor of Speech Pathology (Honours). Her MPhil project investigates long-term speech and language outcomes in survivors of childhood posterior fossa tumours with lesion-symptom mapping techniques. She is co-supervised by Prof Angela Morgan (Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne) and Dr Sonia Brownsett (UQ).

Valeriya Tolkacheva is a PhD student in the LCBS lab, co-supervised by Prof Greig de Zubicaray, Prof Katie McMahon and Dr Sonia Brownsett. Valeriya completed her joint Master of Science degree in Clinical Linguistics at the University of Groningen, University of Potsdam and University of Eastern Finland in 2019 (EMCL+ program). Her research focuses on investigating statistical regularities in language and the role of the right hemisphere in comprehension and production using behavioural and neuromodulation (navigated TMS) methods. In the lab, Valeriya is working on the Adult Brain Tumour Project and investigating the neurobiological correlates of language impairments in brain tumour patients after surgery using Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI). She also works as a sessional academic in the School of Psychology and Counselling and does tutoring on different subjects in the field of psychology. In the future, she aims to continue a career path in academia and pursue a postdoctoral fellowship to study the cognitive neuroscience of language. Outside of the lab, she likes painting, singing, hiking, and scuba diving.

Matteo Mascelloni is a PhD student and Lab Manager at the LCBS Lab, supervised by Prof. de Zubicaray, Prof. McMahon, Dr. Piai and Prof Liegeois-Chauvel. Matteo completed his Bachelor degree in Communication and Languages at the University of Siena and his Double Master Degree in Cognitive Science at the University of Trento and University of Osnbrueck. His research focuses on electrophysiological signature of spoken word production using both scalp and intracranial electrophysiology. He recently obtained a job as Sales Engineer at ANT Neuro Australia. Outside the lab Matteo loves videogames and boardgames, cooking and a good glass of wine.