Catrina Hacker

Catrina M. Hacker

Hello! My name is Catrina Hacker and I am a fourth-year PhD student in the Neuroscience Graduate Group at the University of Pennsylvania. My research interests lie at the intersection of computational, cognitive, and systems neuroscience with broad interests in population coding, neural networks, and learning and memory.

I am doing my thesis work in Dr. Nicole Rust's Visual Memory Lab where I'm studying how our recent visual experience shapes visual recognition memory.

I enjoy writing about neuroscience. Check out the writing page to read some of my recent blog-style posts.

A little bit about me....

I graduated from the University of Southern California in May 2019 with a Bachelor’s degree in neuroscience. While at USC I worked on several projects aimed at uncovering neurocomputational accounts of face recognition. I also worked in a songbird lab where I helped develop an experiment that coupled real-time behavioral evaluation with optogenetic stimulation in juvenile zebra finches. You can read more about my undergradaute work here. In August 2019 I joined the University of Pennsylvania’s Neuroscience Graduate Group where I've been working with Dr. Nicole Rust.

When I’m not in the lab I enjoy playing board games, listening to music, playing the viola and piano, watching movies, and immersing myself in a good mystery.

Have questions or comments? Feel free to reach out!