Thomas M. Spalek, PhD

Website    Scholar

Dr. Spalek completed both his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Toronto. Upon completing his Ph.D. in 2002, he accepted a position at Simon Fraser University and has been here ever since.

His research focuses on mechanisms of attention and memory in normal functioning young adults, using procedures that typically yield phenomena such as the Attentional Blink (AB) and Inhibition of Return (IOR). He is also interested in investigating how cognitive phenomena studied in the lab might play a role in the everyday context of driving a car. To this end, the lab is equipped with sophisticated eye scanning equipment, EEG systems, TMS systems, and a high-fidelity driving simulator. Dr. Spalek is funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

Vincent Di Lollo, PhD

Website    Scholar    ResearchGate

Born in Gorizia, in the Italian North-East, Vincent Di Lollo, his parents and two brothers fled to Australia as refugees at the end of WW2. While busy learning English, he worked at a variety of jobs, including as a miner, construction worker, and barman. His English proficiency improved sufficiently to win a scholarship to the University of Western Australia where he completed a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to work at the universities of Indiana, Michigan, and Princeton. After a brief return to work at UWA, he moved to Canada where he has held appointments at the Universities of Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia before spending the past 15 years as Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Simon Fraser University.

Dr. Di Lollo’s research is aimed at discovering what brain processes mediate the perception of objects and events in the visual world. His work on re-entrant brain pathways draws extensively from the fields of visual attention, computer modeling and event-related potentials. It has resulted in over 200 publications in prestigious scientific journals and professional conferences. Laboratories across the world are building on this work to test and further develop a re-entrant theory of visual perception. In a survey by the American Psychological Society, Di Lollo’s work was listed among the contributions that triggered the most significant changes in the direction of psychological research in the twentieth century.

Dr. Di Lollo has served the Canadian academic community unselfishly in scientific advocacy and in shaping national science policy. He has served as President of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science from which he received the Donald O. Hebb Distinguished Contribution Award, and the Richard C. Tees Distinguished Leadership Award. He twice chaired the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council’s Grant Selection Committee, and is a former Editor of the Canadian Journal of Psychology. In recognition of his scientific achievements and public service, Dr. Di Lollo was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society of Canada.

Bertrand Sager, MA

Bertrand is an avid motorcyclist, which is what brought him to the study of psychology. Before returning to school, Bertrand worked as a software developer and then a driving instructor. His work is concerned with visual attention and perception; his master’s thesis examined perceptual factors involved in car-motorcycle collisions. Bertrand is very interested in all things related to cognitive psychology, and is currently working on attention research involving Attentional Blink and Object-Substitution Masking.

Elisabeth Kreykenbohm, MA

Elisabeth completed her MA in 2019. It focused on the attentional phenomenon of inhibition of return, in light and dark-adapted scenarios. Elisabeth has spent a lot of time working with our lab's eye tracker and analyzing it's complex data. She is amazing at drawing, and photoshop, and regularly beats everyone at any video game.

Regard Booy, MA

Reg is a PhD student currently exploring the ever expanding world of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). His research focuses on understanding the cognitive mechanisms that guide and shape our interactions with the world. He is particularly interested in the processes that underlie emotions and the cognitive biases that dictate our interaction with computers.

Nadja Jankovic, MA, BSc

Nadja is a PhD student and is interested in the timing characteristics of early perceptual and attentional processes. Her MA work involved a first look at the effects of an attentional alerting stimulus during compound visual search. Nadja is the lab's resident transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) operator, and is using TMS to investigate the temporal dynamics of the human visual system as part of her PhD research. In her free time, Nadja enjoys walking in coastal forests, road cycling, birding, and climbing rocks.  

Taylor Cork, BA

Taylor completed her BA (Hons) under the supervison of Tom and Vince in 2018. Her Honours looked at differences in task demands between various types of visual search. She is currently working on her MA in the lab and is interested in EEG, TMS, and imaging generally.