SPOTLIGHT - PROFESSOR RICHARDS

This week's spotlight was with Professor Ginny Richards! She is a professor in the Cognitive Sciences Department and teaches courses in Sensation and Perception, and is the interm Cognitive Science Honors Program Chair. Pre-COVID, her research involved auditory perception, psychophysics and psycho-acoustics, and recently has begun computational modeling of brain imaging!

Here's what she wants you to know:

What even IS auditory perception, psych-acoustics, and the like???
It involves the perception of sounds, where the sound is coming from, which sounds we pay attention to, how we process sentences over periods of time, and more!

What advice would you give a student who wants to pursue research in this field?
- Try a couple of labs! Ask professors in the field what their undergraduate major was, and what labs they joined. It is not a one way path to do research in auditory perception.
(FUN FACT: she was an engineering major in her undergrad!)

What kinds of industry jobs can you pursue with this background?
-You can go into virtual reality!! Auditory perception involves spatial perception, which is a HUGE aspect of making virtual reality more realistic.

-A lot of people will go into medical programs, such as an MD-PHD or Speech Language Therapies.

What is your favorite topic/project that you worked on?
-There isn't one!! Boredome is perfectly OK. Jumping topics is OK. Do the research you are interested in at the time, you don't have to stick with it! That is one of the beauties of research as a career, whether it's academia or industry.

-She has done a lot of interesting research regarding the effectiveness of cochlear implants using EEG, and calls for more research into neural plasticity to increase their effectiveness. 

HER ADVICE FOR YOU: Don't worry so much! Everything is going to be fine, even if your path changes in ways you didn't anticipate.